The Rise of Emoji 絵文字 Internationalization and Unicode Conference IUC 40 Alolita Sharma Board Director at Unicode Consortium
The Rise of Emoji絵文字
Internationalization and Unicode Conference IUC 40Alolita SharmaBoard Director at Unicode Consortium
Emoji has taken over the Web
Origins of Emoji
● The word Emoji comes from Japanese
● Emoji were initially used by Japanese mobile operators, NTT DoCoMo, KDDI, and SoftBank Mobile
● First emoji was created in 1998 in Japan by Shigetaka Kurita at NTT DoCoMo
● Kurita created the first 180 emoji for browsing, doing email on mobile phones
絵文字
絵 (e ≅ picture)
文 (mo ≅ writing)
字 (ji ≅ character)
Unicode and Emoji
The Unicode Standard started encoding Emoji in 2010
● Unicode 6.0 added 722 characters
○ 114 characters were from the original Japanese character set which had been added earlier to Unicode 5.2
○ 608 new characters were also added
● Unicode 7.0 added 250 characters, many from Webdings and Wingdings fonts
Unicode and Emoji
● Unicode 8 added 41 Emoji ○ 1,051 codepoints across 22 code blocks
● Unicode 9 added 72 Emoji● Emoji Stats as of 11/2016
○ 1394 Emoji○ 435 Modified Emoji○ 22 Sequences○ 1851 Total
● Unicode 10 Emoji candidates list○ 8 Emoji candidates for consideration so far○ http://unicode.org/emoji/charts/emoji-candidates.ht
ml● Emoji Unicode Technical Report 51
http://unicode.org/reports/tr51/
● Emoji Chart
http://unicode.org/emoji/charts/full-emoji-list.html
How are people using Emoji?
How are people using Emoji?
● An Emoji is worth a thousand words!
● Emoji enables users to represent
interests - cultural, entertainment,
regional, national, events, sports,
diversity
● Emoji enables users express reactions -
pleased, happy, sad, angry
● Emoji enables diverse people to
connect across languages and cultures
How are people using Emoji?
People and organizations are using emoji
everywhere - on search, social media,
messaging platforms, email
● News - local, national, global, disasters
● Current events - public and personalNews and Current EventsElection campaigns and votingRestaurant reviews and menusAdvertisingMarketing and BrandingFinancial
How are platforms leveraging Emoji?
Search: Google Google with Emoji!
○ E.g. for “Spaghetti or Pasta”
● Google’s search engine can recognize
emoji, understand what you are searching for and provide users related suggestions
● Continuous training, amplifying signal and reducing noise helps improve search relevance and personalization
Restaurant Search: Yelp
Search on Yelp for restaurants with standard Unicode food emoji
○ E.g. Use for “Pasta”
Advertising and Branding: Twitter
Emoji
Twitter Emoji is used for advertising and brand campaigns
● Brands leverage these custom emojis for advertising campaigns○ Movie releases - StarWars
○ NFL
○ World Cup in Soccer
Emojineering
Emojineering
Emoji Input and Output
● Touch keymaps■ Mobile
■ Browsers
● Specialized hardware keyboards
■ Touch Bar in the latest Macs
● Emoji support in text rendering engines including Harfbuzz, Uniscribe, ICU
● Noto Emoji Font
Engineering for Emoji
Emojineering
Emoji Detection
● Leverages language processing techniques (NLP) to detect emoji ○ Accuracy
○ Performance
Engineering for Emoji
Emojineering
Emoji Processing
● Machine Learning and NLP for Emoji○ Search
○ Trends
○ Reviews
○ Ratings
● Emoji Translation ○ Mapping context
○ Instagram, WhatsApp, Twitter,
Android, iOS
Engineering for Emoji
Emojineering
Challenges
● Symantic understanding: Continuous training to understand emoji in user generated content
● Supporting Interoperability:○ Minimizing fragmentation of
look-and-feel
● Encoding the right emoji○ Avoiding fads (e.g. Pokemon)
● Representing cultural diversity
Engineering for Emoji
The Future of Emoji
Is another language evolving?
The future of Emoji is bright!
★ Fun★ Fad★ Expressive★ Effective★ Cross platform★ Mobile everywhere★ Controversial★ A new language
Encode popular Emoji
You can contribute Emoji too!
Submit a proposal to encode popular
Emoji in Unicode
● Guidelines for a proposal at: http://unicode.org/emoji/selection.html
● Provide evidence of frequency,
compatibility, completeness,
references across major
networks or cultures
● Contribute to Unicode
Popular Emoji References
Check them out!
★ Emojipedia.com★ Emojitracker.com★ Emoji.academy★ EmojiFoundation.com★ CanIEmoji.com★ EmojiOne.com★ EmojiXpress.com★ Unicode.org/Emoji
Thanks! Questions?
Keep in touch!
@alolita