World Emoji Day

Emoji is a small digital icon becoming popular these days and no doubt is an integral part of our conversation. When we feel lazy or when we are at a loss for words then we use emojis to express what we want to. For every feeling, there are emojis now. From the past years, emojis have evolved. It not only expresses simple human feelings but more than that.

The first emoji was created in 1999 by Shigetaka Kurita, an engineer working at a Japanese mobile operator, NTT Docomo. He creates 176 emojis for the release of the Japanese mobile phone operator NTT DoCoMo's integrated mobile internet service "I-mode", debuting in February 1999. For only 250 characters the service was allowed which gave Kurita the challenge to figure out a way to communicate in an expressive but short way. In Yahoo Messenger, the oldest 'mainstream' emoji was used. In 2010, by Unicode emoji was finally standardised. That is brands like Google, Microsoft, Facebook and Twitter can start creating their own versions of Emoji that would appear even if a message was sent from another operating system. Let us tell you that Unicode 6.0 is the largest release of emoji yet, consisting of 994 characters like emotions, a pile of poo, families, hearts, animals, clothes, food, city images, clocks, and country flags.

The main purpose of the day is to promote the use of emojis and spread the emoji for the enjoyment that they bring to all of those around us. Emojis are for all of us.