The Rise of Emoji 絵文字 Internationalization and Unicode Conference IUC 40 Alolita Sharma Board Director at Unicode Consortium Emoji has taken over the Web ● The word Emoji comes from Japanese ● Emoji were initially used by Japanese mobile operators, NTT DoCoMo, KDDI, and Origins of Emoji SoftBank Mobile ● First emoji was created in 1998 絵文字 in Japan by Shigetaka Kurita at NTT DoCoMo 絵 (e ≅ picture) ● Kurita created the first 180 emoji for browsing, doing email 文 (mo ≅ writing) on mobile phones 字 (ji ≅ character) The Unicode Standard started encoding Emoji in 2010 ● Unicode 6.0 added 722 characters ○ 114 characters were from the original Japanese character set which had been added earlier to Unicode and Emoji Unicode 5.2 ○ 608 new characters were also added ● Unicode 7.0 added 250 characters, many from Webdings and Wingdings fonts ● Unicode 8 added 41 Emoji ○ 1,051 codepoints across 22 code blocks ● Unicode 9 added 72 Emoji ● Emoji Stats as of 11/2016 ○ 1394 Emoji ○ 435 Modified Emoji ○ 22 Sequences ○ 1851 Total Unicode and Emoji ● Unicode 10 Emoji candidates list ○ 8 Emoji candidates for consideration so far ○ http://unicode.org/emoji/charts/emoji-candidates.ht ml ● Emoji Unicode Technical Report 51 http://unicode.org/reports/tr51/ ● Emoji Chart http://unicode.org/emoji/charts/full-emoji-list.html How are people using Emoji? ● An Emoji is worth a thousand words! ● Emoji enables users to represent interests - cultural, entertainment, How are people regional, national, events, sports, diversity using Emoji? ● Emoji enables users express reactions - pleased, happy, sad, angry ● Emoji enables diverse people to connect across languages and cultures People and organizations are using emoji everywhere - on search, social media, messaging platforms, email ● News - local, national, global, disasters How are people using Emoji? ● Current events - public and personal News and Current Events Election campaigns and voting Restaurant reviews and menus Advertising Marketing and Branding Financial How are platforms leveraging Emoji? Search: Google Google with Emoji! ○ E.g. for “Spaghetti or Pasta” ● Google’s search engine can recognize emoji, understand what you are searching for and provide users related suggestions ● Continuous training, amplifying signal and reducing noise helps improve search relevance and personalization Restaurant Search: Yelp Search on Yelp for restaurants with standard Unicode food emoji ○ E.g. Use for “Pasta” Advertising and Branding: Twitter Twitter Emoji is used for advertising and brand campaigns Emoji ● Brands leverage these custom emojis for advertising campaigns ○ Movie releases - StarWars ○ NFL ○ World Cup in Soccer Emojineering Emoji Input and Output ● Touch keymaps ■ Mobile ■ Browsers ● Specialized hardware keyboards Emojineering ■ Touch Bar in the latest Macs ● Emoji support in text rendering Engineering for Emoji engines including Harfbuzz, Uniscribe, ICU ● Noto Emoji Font Emoji Detection ● Leverages language processing Emojineering techniques (NLP) to detect emoji Engineering for Emoji ○ Accuracy ○ Performance Emoji Processing ● Machine Learning and NLP for Emoji ○ Search ○ Trends Emojineering ○ Reviews ○ Ratings Engineering for Emoji ● Emoji Translation ○ Mapping context ○ Instagram, WhatsApp, Twitter, Android, iOS Challenges ● Symantic understanding: Continuous training to understand emoji in user Emojineering generated content ● Supporting Interoperability: Engineering for Emoji ○ Minimizing fragmentation of look-and-feel ● Encoding the right emoji ○ Avoiding fads (e.g. Pokemon) ● Representing cultural diversity The Future of Emoji ★ Fun ★ Fad Is another ★ Expressive language evolving? ★ Effective ★ Cross platform The future of Emoji is bright! ★ Mobile everywhere ★ Controversial ★ A new language Submit a proposal to encode popular Emoji in Unicode Encode popular ● Guidelines for a proposal at: Emoji http://unicode.org/emoji/selection.html ● Provide evidence of frequency, You can contribute Emoji too! compatibility, completeness, references across major networks or cultures ● Contribute to Unicode ★ Emojipedia.com ★ Emojitracker.com Popular Emoji ★ Emoji.academy ★ EmojiFoundation.com References ★ CanIEmoji.com ★ Check them out! EmojiOne.com ★ EmojiXpress.com ★ Unicode.org/Emoji Questions? Thanks! Keep in touch! @alolita.