Emojis have become a huge way of how we communicate nowadays. They were originally created in the late 1990s by Shigetaka Kurita, to help facilitate electronic communication, but have become a cultural phenomenon more recently. Because of the advances of mobile technology, and either human creativeness or laziness, we’ve become able to communicate only using these tiny graphics. But there is so much more to emoji’s than just being little smiley faces used for visual electronic communication.
Emoji Fun Facts
Emojis are not emoticons
The Japanese word emoji can be roughly translated to standardized icons with a meaning. Emojis are pictures derived from an actual code, which can be transferred by emails and phones. When the code is sent, it is then converted into an icon for the person receiving it to see. Emoticon is the generic name for characters or pictures meant to display some sort of expression. For example, the first emoticon ever was “:-)” used in September of 1982 by Scott Fahlman. Emojis are different because they are actually codes that are being converted into the images we see when emoticons are just characters trying to look/act like an emotion.
Emoji’s come free on the iPhone
When you take an iPhone out of its packaging and turn it on, the keyboard does not give you the option to type with emojis. This is because they are on the international keyboard and it simply needs to be added to your regular keyboard for full access! Start by going into settings, then hit general, then keyboard, then add new keyboard, and find emoji and you’ll have it on your keyboard every time you have to option to type!
Why do Emoji’s have to be unlocked?
Emojis have to be unlocked because mobile phone carriers do not all have the same bank of emojis. Since there are different emoji banks, the codes for other carriers are different as well. Since, inter-carrier-emoji-communication was inoperable, a conversion table was necessary so people different phone companies could use emojis with one another. Tech companies such as Apple and Google have wanted to come up with a standardized bank of picture words so the conversion table wouldn’t be necessary.
The future of Emojis
Emojis are starting to flood the Apple iTunes store. If you search emoji, you get over 2,000 results different types of emoji apps. The search results range from more pictures to add on to the keyboard to games in which you have to guess the word or phrase a group of emoji’s is trying to represent. It seems that the emoji craze has plenty of more juice left in it and they’re sure to be more emoji fun facts to come in the near future.
