World Emoji Day is a fun and jovial day celebrated on July 17 every year. This date was chosen as July 17 is displayed on the calendar emoji. It is an unofficial holiday described as ‘Global creation of Emojis’. The day encourages us to use emojis to send unique messages.
Emoji is a Japanese expression which roughly means “picture word” and was created by Shigetaka Kurita in 1990. While working for the Japanese telecom company NTT Docomo, Kurita would design these picture words as a feature on their pagers to make them more appealing to teens. The release of the first iPhone by Apple in 2007 had an emoji keyboard embedded into the phone to nab the Japanese market.
Every year on this date Twitter users vote during the World Emoji awards, choosing categories such as most anticipated and most popular emoji of the year.
Here are some fun facts about unofficial holiday you must know:
- Jeremy Burge created the World Emoji Day on July 17 in 2014.
- According to EmojiTracker, the most commonly used Emoji on Twitter is “Face With Tears of Joy”.
- When translated from Japanese to English, emoji means “picture character.”
- As texting became a prominent mode of communication, emojis grew in popularity. They gained notoriety in 2012 when the iPhone released iOS 6 and users gained access to its vibrant emoji keyboard.
- In 2013, the word emoji was added to the Oxford English Dictionary. By 2015, it was in the Merriam-Webster dictionary.
- Today, users can choose from 2666 emojis to express their opinions, ideas, and views.
- In 2013, the Emojipedia, an online search directory for emojis, was created by Jeremy Burge. Users can search for any emoji and also look up the meaning for any particular emoji.
- The animated Emoji movie that was released in 2017 offered a fictional glimpse in the world of emojis. In the movie, the lead emoji – gene, the meh emoji sets out on a journey to rectify its glitch and become a regular emoji.
