Happy World Emoji Day!

17th July 2015

It can't just be us - does 17th July sound like a very familiar date? You've probably scrolled past it a thousand times on your way to the food emoji, 17th July is the date on the iOS calendar emoji 📅 Which makes it a perfect time to celebrate World Emoji Day 🌏

Here are some more little-known emoji facts...

✏ The emoji was created in 1998 by Shigetaka Kurita. 
 
You can 'emojify' headlines, songs, books and films on the Wall Street Journal site 🎶 📹 📚 Be warned, this is addictive!

📈 There are 845 emoji in iOS7

See emoji use in real-time using emojitracker.com, which gathers data from Twitter users 🐦

There are two camel emoji because there are different words for one-hump camels and 🐫 two-hump camels.

👍 The French are the most positive emoji users, sending happy faces and hand gestures 86% of the time. 👎 Spanish speakers in America are the most negative, 22% of their emoji use contains sad faces.

Emoji are not the same as emoticons 🚫 Emoji are sent using Unicode the computing standard, transferred between emails and phones and converted into an icon. Emoticon is the name for characters typed to look like some form of expression - for instance, :D 

💡 Why do we keep saying 'emoji' and not 'emojis'? It's widely accepted that the plural for emoji can be either.

New emoji are released annually by Unicode 📲 Although it's not clear when they will arrive for iOS or Android. The emojis coming soon will include a unicorn, cheese, a popping champagne bottle and popcorn. For now, they look like this 🗃... not great! 

If your birthday is July 17th 🎈 according to World Emoji Day rules, you can be emoji royalty for the day 👑