Emojis have become a part of our day-to-day communication now. They have emerged as a popular and convenient way of conveying emotions, feelings, and reactions to those on the other side of our screens. Things that were difficult to express through written text have now become easier and on top of that, it has made texting much more interesting for everyone.

On July 17 every year, World Emoji Day is celebrated globally to promote the usage of emojis on digital platforms like WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. Emoji is a Japanese word that means picture word. In the beginning, there were emoticons and now after emojis, the world is slowly moving to animated emojis, stickers, and animated stickers that make the messaging experience even more engaging.

History of emoji

The first emoji was developed in the year 1999 by an engineer in Japan. Shigetaka Kurika at that time worked in a Japanese telecom company NTT Docomo. After that, he created 176 emojis for the release of a mobile integrated service called i-mode.

Emojis help us express our emotions better. (Source: getemoji)

In 2007, a software internationalisation team at Google petitioned to get emoji recognised by the Unicode Consortium, a nonprofit group that works to maintain text standards across computers.

Later, in the year 2010, as the popularity of smartphones increased, Unicode finally standardised the usage of emojis. Since then, popular global brands like Google, Microsoft, Facebook, and Twitter have started creating their own versions of emojis. A list of emojis is published and approved by the Unicode Consortium every year.

Significance

World Emoji Day was created by Jeremy Burge, also known as the founder of Emojipedia. In the year 2014, Burge announced that July 17 will be observed as World Emoji Day and since then it is celebrated annually. One more reason that it is celebrated on July 17 is that the calendar emoji depicts the date as its image.

Let us have a look at some of the tweets to know the latest updates this World Emoji Day:

It’s #WorldEmojiDay and we have something to share… #Kiwiswantakiwi pic.twitter.com/eWvR6QBhVp

— New Zealand ???????? (@PureNewZealand) July 16, 2021

World Emoji Day: New emojis await approval, new Memoji stickers come to iOS 15https://t.co/LcnP6VJtUk

— Gadgets 360 (@Gadgets360) July 17, 2021

Google’s emojis are getting a facelift in Android 12 this fall https://t.co/uUA8ii6Xfp

— CNET (@CNET) July 16, 2021

Sound on!! Because our favourite characters as emojis is all the cuteness we needed for today ????#WorldEmojiDay! pic.twitter.com/dpwNFdn07V

— Red Chillies Entertainment (@RedChilliesEnt) July 17, 2021

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