How Have the Emojis We Love Evolved Over the Years?

Emojis are so common that you might not even think about them before you use them. But, like anything digital, emojis were new — and confusing — to new computer users when they were first introduced in the 1990’s. Here, we’ll talk about the ubiquitous emoji — where it’s been, where it is now, and where it’s going.

The History of Emojis
Emojis were originally introduced in Japan nearly two decades ago. Shigetaka Kurita created the emoji in the mid-1990s. In the early days, users simply put together different symbols to look like faces. They were simply a string of keyboard icons put together in emails to express conversation. The symbols didn’t transform into anything else like they do today; instead, a colon and a parenthesis were used together to look like a smiling face or a semicolon and a parenthesis were used to make a winking face.

Read More: How to Use Your Android Device Like a True Techie

Emojis in Present Day
Now, emojis are automatically transformed into smiling, usually yellow emoticons when you type the symbols into a variety of programs. You can also choose from a number of action-oriented emoticons in your texting, chatting, or email applications that range from a girl dancing the hula to a smiling face with two heart eyes blowing a kiss. Currently, there are 140 emoji characters common to apps and devices.

Emojis do more these days than just display your emotion. For example, you can use Fooji, a New York City food delivery service, to order food using a series of emojis. Dominos also will deliver pizzas to your door if you simply #OrderWithaTweet using a pizza emoji. In email, emojis in the subject line are helping marketing campaigns — users are less likely to delete emails with happy emojis in the subject line.

The Future of Emojis
Emojis are being created to better represent people’s daily lives. Femojis have been created to represent women aiming for gender equality, and “abused” emojis are designed to help children report abuse. There are 250 new emojis coming to standard devices in the near future — who knows what they will look like?

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