There’s a whole rhetoric to Tumblr, and as I wrote yesterday, animated gifs are an important part of it. Compare, for instance, The White House’s official Tumblr page to the now suddenly quite staid-seeming Facebook communication. Here’s the Tumblr image they posted the day before the government shutdown:

Obama-you-dont-extract-ransom-government-shutdown-white-house-tumblr-sept30-2013

Even the italic font used is the one commonly used on subtitling of loops from videos. And here’s the version they put on Facebook:

obama-facebook-dont-extract-ransom-sept30

Until yesterday I hadn’t realised that The White House was even on Tumblr, and I certainly hadn’t considered their alternate rhetorical strategies. Are there other sites where they speak differently again? Instagram has the same image as Facebook, and Twitter has the text.

Do you know of other social media actors that use different strategies on Tumblr and Facebook?

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