via National Day Calendar:
July 17 recognizes World Emoji Day and many of the world’s symbolic icons for digital calendars.
Now before the emoji, there were emoticons. Emoticons (emotion + icon) were developed as an expression of emotions in the cold hard texts that were devoid of them.
Emoji, a Japanese expression, roughly means “picture word” and was developed in 1990 by Shigetaka Kurita. While working for NTT Docomo, a Japanese telecom company, Kurita design these picture words as a feature on their pagers to make them more appealing to teens.
When Apple released the first iPhone in 2007, an emoji keyboard was embedded to nab the Japanese market. While not intended for U.S. users to find, they did and quickly figured out how to use it.
Every year new emojis (both emoji and emojis are acceptable plural forms of the word) are developed. The emojipedia.org keeps track of all the emoji updates across all platforms and operating systems. There are over 1800 emojis covering much more than just emotions. From transportation, food, an assortment of wild and domesticated animals to social platforms, weather, and bodily functions emojis virtually speak for themselves.
HOW TO OBSERVE
Explore emojis.
Send them to your friends.
if they
it! Use #WorldEmojiDay to share on social media.
HISTORY
In 2014, Emojipedia founder Jeremy Burge created World Emoji Day. The date of July 17 has been intrinsic to the iconic red and black Apple calendar emoji since its launch in 2002.
