Emoji have become an integral part of online communication. Where would we be without the ability to express feelings alongside our messages? Before the explosion of emoji popularity, emoticons were the de facto message for expressing a feeling.
ContentsHistoryAppearanceImplementationAnecdotesConclusionWhy have emoticons waned as emoji have become so popular? Let's take a look at the history of emoji.
Emoji is not an English word, although it sounds like "emotion" and "emoticon". The word is a combination of two Japanese words which can be roughly translated as "image" and "character". Apart from being a bit of an etymological anecdote, it also perfectly explains the purpose of emoji. Unsurprisingly, it was in Japan that emoji first became popular, but what's surprising is that they've been around since the late 1990s.
DoCoMo, Japan's largest network provider, introduced the characters to their i-mode messaging service where they caught on very quickly. Competing services saw their popularity rise and rushed to introduce their own similar products.
Beyond that, linguists became interested in emoji usage with the release of Emoji Feeling Ranking 1.0 in 2015.
Depending on the website or device you are viewing the content on, the emoji may appear differently. This is because the icons included on each device tend to differ, with companies having their own take on the designs. The above shows Twitter's view of the "face with tears of joy" emoji1 and explains in part how it became the most used emoji.
Sites like Emojipedia are invaluable resources, listing the various designs on mobile operating systems and websites and providing a brief history of emoji implementation. The vast majority will come from Unicode 6.0 in 2010, which put emoji in the spotlight.
Emojipedia also tracks emoji changes. Over time, designs are modified, either to accommodate a new design language or to correct an error in the original design. Considering how often they're used, some of the changes are quite surprising.
Companies have blurred the distinction between emoticons and emoticons, especially lately. Facebook has introduced its own range of designs that trigger when sent as emoji or emoticons. Even the "reaction" system for likes bears some resemblance, with the same set of emoji faces displayed in the corner of posts to reflect the overall sentiment.
Regardless of how the emoji looks, what is actually sent remains the same. Nowadays it is a Unicode character, which the device is designed to then display as the appropriate emoji. To do this, the character will probably be displayed in another font inaccessible for normal use.
Continuing with the Apple iPhone example, this font is called ‘Apple Color Emoji‘ and was released to coincide with iOS 5.0.
Although it is not available through the emoji keyboard, you can add at least one emoji symbol to your mobile phone. Gadget Hacks had a video showcasing this trick.
The emoji above, identified as "Laughing with tears of joy", is the most commonly used emoji in the world - the Oxford English Dictionary rated it the best word of 2015. No, we don't. don't know if it's really a word either. .
Emoji are a fun way to converse, but as this article should illustrate, they're a lot more complex than we think. Designers obsess over their purpose, while linguists examine their use through a critical prism.
However often you use them, they have had a definite impact on the way we look at social media.
