Emoji

(cf reacji, slackmoji) An emoji (/ɪˈmoʊdʒi/ im-OH-jee; plural emoji or emojis;[1] Japanese: 絵文字, pronounced [emoꜜʑi]) is a pictogram, logogram, ideogram, or smiley embedded in text and used in electronic messages and web pages. The primary function of modern emoji is to fill in emotional cues otherwise missing from typed conversation as well as to replace words as part of a logographic system.[2]... Originally meaning pictograph, the word emoji comes from Japanese e (絵; 'picture') + moji (文字; 'character');[4] the resemblance to the English words emotion and emoticon is purely coincidental.[5] The first emoji sets were created by Japanese portable electronic device companies in the late 1980s and the 1990s.[6] Emoji became increasingly popular worldwide in the 2010s after Unicode began encoding emoji into the Unicode Standard... The first emoji are a matter of contention due to differing definitions and poor early documentation.[22][6] It was previously widely considered that DoCoMo had the first emoji set in 1999, but an Emojipedia blog article in 2019 brought SoftBank's earlier 1997 set to light.[22] More recently, in 2024, earlier emoji sets were uncovered on portable devices by Sharp Corporation and NEC[23] in the early 1990s, with the 1988 Sharp PA-8500 (PDA) harboring what can be defined as the earliest known emoji set that reflects emoji keyboards today. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emoji

• The first American company to take notice of emoji was Google beginning in 2007. In August 2007, a team made up of Mark Davis and his colleagues Kat Momoi and Markus Scherer began petitioning the Unicode Technical Committee (UTC) in an attempt to standardise the emoji... In late 2014, a Public Review Issue was created by the Unicode Technical Committee, seeking feedback on a proposed Unicode Technical Report (UTR) titled "Unicode Emoji". This was intended to improve interoperability of emoji between vendors, and define a means of supporting multiple skin tones.
• Linguistically, emoji are used to indicate emotional state; they tend to be used more in positive communication. Some researchers believe emoji can be used for visual rhetoric. Emoji can be used to set emotional tone in messages. Emoji tend not to have their own meaning but act as a paralanguage, adding meaning to text. Emoji can add clarity and credibility to text.
• Research has shown that emoji are often misunderstood. In some cases, this misunderstanding is related to how the actual emoji design is interpreted by the viewer;[124] in other cases, the emoji that was sent is not shown in the same way on the receiving side. (communication)

Introduced in slack.com in 2015.

• Matt Haughey on how they use it, including searching.
• 18F on their tagging/searching