Editor's note: This article is from the WeChat public account "Silicon Rabbit Race" (ID: sv_race), author Shan Bingqin; 36氪 is released with authorization.
emoji was born for ❤️, it originated in Japan, and its creator is Hotaka Kurita.
In 1999, Kurita was an employee of NTT Mobile Communications Company's business department. He discovered that the flow of
users changed after removing a "❤️" in the radio paging system. Can the
text symbol indicate the expression needs of people in communication? He had the idea of creating text symbols.
However, Kurita's emoji creation has not been smooth sailing. After being rejected by major manufacturers such as Sharp and Panasonic, he organized his own team to include all human expressions under the crude technical conditions of only 12x12 pixel symbols. A series of emoticons were designed.
was not designed by Kurita, but based on the unified instruction map born during the Tokyo Olympics in 1964, combined with the inspiration of Japanese manga, he created a simple first-generation emoji.
They look like this:
Emoji was officially born on February 22, 1999. In 2009, emoji expressions were incorporated into the Internet, and Unicode (Unicode) began to be used all over the world. Later, Apple, Android and other systems also included emoji expressions. With the popularity of smart phones, the facial expressions created by Awada gradually spread to the world. The advantage of
Emoji-commonality and questioning
emoji fills in the meaning of communication that cannot be directly expressed by language and text. Just as people use facial expressions and body language to assist emotional transmission when speaking, emoji is the facial expression and body language of text.
"Father of Emoji" Kurita once talked about adding a heart to the end of a sharp text message. After reading it, the sharpness of the text immediately disappeared. And the meaning of emoji is the most basic emotion of "human beings".
, in the "emoji report" released by Swiftkey, counts people's habits of using emoji:
, the most widely used emoji in the world today, deserves to be &128578;, occupying 44.8% of the highest frequency of use;
ranks second in ☹️ 14.3%;
is the third place ❤️
really happy, sad, love are the common emotions in the world.
The popularity of emoji is built on the limit of human language development. It is like a text version of body language, which greatly assists the transmission of emotions behind the text. When it is widely used on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, its intuitive and simple way of expressing even transcends countries, transcending language differences, as if communicating with the whole world. Many people believe that this seems to be a global common language. ".
So, are emojis really common? In the "emoji report" released by TouchType,
also showed this result: different countries have different emoji preferences due to different languages and cultures.
For example, &127467;&127479; French people like to use ❤️, the frequency of use is 4 times the average of other languages;
&127470;&127473; &127466;&127468; &127477;&127480; Arabic speakers like flowers and plants&127801;&127800;&128144 ;&127804;&127799;&127802; emoji, the frequency is more than 4 times the average of other languages;
&127479;&127482; Russians love to use a variety of romantic &128145;&128143; emoji, the frequency is 3 times the average of other languages;
&127462;&127482; Australians like to drink with wine&127866; &127867; &127863;&127864;&127865;&127870; related emoji, the frequency is twice the average of other languages, at the same time, they also like to use "narcotics" &128137;, 65% higher than the average of other languages;
&127482; &127480; &127464;&127462; Americans and Canadians do not have a clear preference for individual emoji. Skull&128128; ☠️, birthday cake&127874;, fire&128293;, technology&128640;, homosexuality-related&128104;❤️&128104; &128105;❤️&128105;, meat&127831; and various female-related &128132; &128141; emoji, etc. Certain frequency of use. The phenomenon of
may be due to the fact that both the United States and Canada belong to the country of immigrants, and people who are immersed in various beliefs and values make their cultures more diverse, and therefore they also reflect their individuality in the use of emoji. The different emoji preferences of &128520;
reflect the cultural differences of people in different countries and people who use different languages. Perhaps some people think that such a result does not affect the commonality of emoji, but to a certain extent, it reflects the different emphasis pursued by different cultures in expression and description. This difference in emphasis is likely to lead to different cultural circles. Of people can’t communicate smoothly with emoji and even lead to misunderstandings. For example, when an Arab sends you emoji of flowers and plants frequently, how do you interpret it correctly? &129300;&129300;&129300;
In addition, it is not easy for people to capture or agree with the original meaning of emoji. The British "Daily Mail" summarized the 12 most misunderstood emojis.
For example,
originally means "face with look of triumph" (face with look of triumph), but many people tend to think of it as an "angry face". Another example of
is
, which means "confounded face", but many people like to use it to express stress, fear, or worry.
Various interpretations of the original meaning of emoji are likely to cause misunderstanding and confusion in communication. Not only that, but different people have different understandings of the meaning of the same emoji. According to the "Daily Mail", the most confusing expressions in the APPLE system are "squinting smiles" and "crys with joy".
"Weep with joy" &128514; This emoji is the most confusing on almost all platforms investigated (including Apple, Google, Microsoft, Samsung and LG). This is mainly because the complexity of this emotion is difficult to summarize with a small emoji. In the eyes of different people, this complexity is reflected into completely different emotional meanings.
If the above are only subjective reasons, then the difference of emoji in different communication systems and different APPs shows that it is the objective reason that exacerbates this communication barrier. Since emoji was invented at the beginning, NTT Docomo failed to obtain copyright for it, emoji became a kind of public property. Subsequently, technology companies such as Apple and Google formed the non-profit organization Unicode Consortium to standardize emoji patterns. After that, in order to attract users through differences, major technology companies created different versions of emoji patterns on this basis. This relationship is like that Chinese characters have no copyright, but Chinese character fonts do. The same Chinese character may be very different due to different fonts. In the same way, the display of the same emoji on different mobile devices is even completely different.
is a typical example-the same is "squinting face with smiling eye" &128513; (grinning face with smiling eyes), there are ten completely different emojis on the following ten platforms. With the transmission of information between different platforms, they have been found to have caused a lot of misunderstanding and confusion. For example, a SAMSUNG user sends a squinted smiley face to an APPLE user. The SAMSUNG user may want to express a kind of more open-hearted happiness, but when the APPLE user receives it, it may be because the APPLE smiley face is more subtle, and will The emotions of the other party are also more subtle.
In this way, the commonality of emoji is greatly reduced, which naturally greatly reduces their role in communicating the world, and greatly weakens the possibility that emoji will develop into a language.
But this does not prevent emoji from becoming popular in the world.
American pop music queen &127925; &128081; Katy Perry released a single "Roar" in August 2013. The lyrics in its MV are all expressed by emoji. Emoji can be seen in the popular pomp in the world today. &128165;&128165;&128165;
In 2013, &127462;&127482; Australian Jeremy Burge established a Wikipedia-like emoji-exclusive encyclopedia for emoji, emojipedia, for people to inquire about the meaning of different emojis. This website generates more than 140 million visits every year. There are countless examples of
creating with emoji. For example, in January 2015, the Guardian of the United Kingdom translated the State of the Union address issued by US President Barack Obama into an emoji on Twitter. You see, do you understand?
Even in 2015, the "Oxford Dictionary" vocabulary of the year, which has always focused on English vocabulary reports, also lost emoji, and a "face with tears of joy" &128514; (Face with tears of joy) expression won the crown. This is not only due to the fact that the frequency of emoji usage in the world in just one year is more than three times that of the previous year, and 20% of it is caused by the expression of "cry for joy", but also because this phenomenon indicates the level of human communication. The innovation is brewing.
cute emoji creates new business opportunities
This commonality promotes innovation in human communication. A typical example, in July 2016, L'Oréal (USA) released its self-designed emoji-Beaumoji. This is an emoji keyboard specially designed to spread the concept of "beauty" around the world.
It contains 130 interesting and fashionable emojis, which are born specifically to convey "beauty" with the help of emoji's acclaimed commonality. Not only that, in order to grasp this trend, L'Oréal also allows employees to use emoji to describe their profession on Twitter, for example:
this commonality has given emoji huge business opportunities. Since the emotions they carry can be easily understood by all mankind, the commercial value of emoji is beyond doubt. Marco Hüsges, a 45-year-old German, discovered this potential business opportunity.
He founded emoji company GmbH in Hamburg, Germany in 2013. This company invested millions of dollars to create the official emoji® brand three years later. It currently has more than 4,000 emojis, extensive trademark protection in more than 20 categories, and is compatible with more than 230 global brands such as H&M, Zara, Nestle, and Pepsi. Enterprise authorized cooperation. This company undertakes the design of personal emoticons based on customer consultation and develops marketing plans for customers. Adhering to the admiration and business sense of building a self-iconic lifestyle, emoji company GmbH has grown rapidly, with sales of hundreds of millions of dollars last year alone.
Currently, emoji company GmbH is exploring more cross-industry cooperation and is launching emoji themesMusic and animation, and even set up an emoji theme park. emoji® has quickly become a new international brand, and its official website proudly declares that emoji® "communicates attractiveness, popularity and consistency are the three most difficult elements to find today"-all of which rely on emoji's commonality Sex. This kind of startup is not the only one. Once a commodity can cross cultural boundaries and civilization barriers and become the common spiritual wealth of all mankind, its success seems inevitable.
Emoji's future
So, where is the future of emoji?
At present, due to the popularity of emoji, many large retailers have drawn their own emoji to achieve the advertising effect of catering to young people. For example, Taco Bell, a large American fast food chain company, has drawn the emoji of tacos &127790; (Tacos), and another fast food company Burger King &127828; has specially made chicken tenders to celebrate the relaunch of its own chicken tenders. Emoji keyboard for the theme. The Chevrolet brand car manufactured and sold by the American car manufacturer General Motors (GM) & 128663; also used emoji when making news announcements. A series of large companies such as Coca-Cola, Starbucks, Dove, Toyota Motor and so on have provided Twitter with emoji representing their own brands. In 2015 alone, at least 250 companies produced independent emoji keyboards, and the market was booming.
However, is this really good? John Ohara, the director of strategy for the American media agency Giant Spoon, once said that a large number of low-quality emojis flooded the Internet. “Many large companies are too impatient to give birth to so many emojis that are useless and completely unable to represent their own brands.” The proliferation of emoji produced by enterprises is behind the blind pursuit of popularity. The number is huge and the same, is it not a problem for users?
In addition, from the current scope of emoji use, its main function is still limited to online social media or chat APP, parasitic on the Internet text, and then play a role in conveying emotions and feelings. Once disconnected from the Internet, emoji will be like a fish out of water, with no soil for social functions.
If one day, people’s communication methods change again, and social media platforms relying on the Internet and numerous APPs are replaced, where will emoji go? Can they be reasonably used in other scientific and technological means to serve human communication?
However, in the eyes of "the father of emoji" Kurita, the "emoji package" is after all a pattern, while emoji is a text, a kind of hieroglyph. The functions that the two should undertake are different. Perhaps "emoji packs" can adapt to this popular entertainment doctrine and continue to be an embellishment in people's online communication, but emoji should have a longer-term and more systematic consideration. Because "emoji packs" may be time-sensitive, but emoji are eternal.
Since December 2016, in order to commemorate the great invention of emoji, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, USA has displayed the first 176 emojis drawn in 1999 as permanent collections in the hall in the form of 2D images and animations. Ms. Paola Antonelli, a senior curator of the architectural design department of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, said in an interview with The New York Times that emoji is a brand new communication platform to some extent, but it is more of a pictograph. One of the oldest forms of communication.
"I love this kind of connection that spans the centuries," she said.
Reference materials:
system input application Swiftkey development company TouchType "emoji report"
