Celebrating World Emoji Day

July 17 is World Emoji Day. You may be asking why this day, and why celebrate Emoji’s? For that I can only answer the first part of the question, the rest well .  The date was chosen based on the calendar emoji on iOS while other platforms use different dates this was the one that was chosen (sorry Android).

Most popular Emoji’s

Researchers at the University of Michigan and Peking University conducted a study in 2016 analyzing 427 million messages from nearly 4 million smartphone users in 212 countries and regions. That’s a lot of emoji’s!  The top 3 emoji’s used worldwide are…;

1.  (Crying with tears of Joy)
2. ❤️ (Red heart)
3.   (In love or smiling face with heart eyes)

Where did it all begin?

Emoji’s have evolved from emoticons which have been around for a few centuries, though there is no consensus on the actual year it began. Some say it all started in the 1600’s.

According to our research and this infographic it may have been from a poem from 1648. Some other great things we discovered from this infographic, which is a good recap of emoji history are; ,

• Emojis first started their debut on digital devices in the 1990’s in Japan
• There are over 1851 emoji characters on current platforms (it is honestly like a whole new language)
• 2015 was the year of the crying out loud emoji (clearly we all love this emoji as it ranks the highest used emoji still!)

Related: What are the best ways to use emoji’s in email campaigns.

Pictures paint a thousand words and with Emoji’s being able to cross cultural and language barriers it is no wonder they have exploded in use. Check out this history and how they have changed how we communicate below :).

And yes there is even an emoji anthem…don’t ask…