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