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Hi Chris, thanks a lot for taking the time to respond.  It almost doubles our page load time (again, 95% of the page is loaded, but the FB friends widget takes just as long again).  Our programmers are blaming slow page speed on the FB widget.  If we think about Google's goal of creating good user experiences, one would think they care more about the core content than a widget that appears on every page on the site.  But I'm not sure if they're accounting for that.  Our page speeds are bad (often 5-7 sec or more), but its hard to know if that is having an SEO impact.  I couldn't find any concrete answers online.  We're going to opt for a simpler version of the widget and hopefully that has a positive effect.

Pleasure.