Thumbs up 👍, laughing smiley 🙂, heart ❤ or confetti bomb 🎊 – text messages and chats can hardly do without so-called emojis.
These are icons or pictograms that are primarily placed in text messages in order to take on the role of gestures and facial expressions. In WhatsApp messages, the icons serve as an emotional flagship.
Just in time for “World Emoji Day” on July 17, 2022, the online platform “Emojipedia” presented some icons that could be used in the chat programs of iOS and Android devices from September of this year.
“Emojipedia” is a kind of online register for emojis in which all icons and their Unicodes (i.e. universal character encodings for the computer) are shown and listed. The platform collects and provides suggestions for new emojis, which then have to be approved and approved by the so-called “Unicode Consortium”.
From September, the new emojis in the messenger apps could include icons such as the “shake head emoji” – although the head is interpreted in various Twitter comments as a heavily shaken emoji.
Other suggestions that could be adopted are “high five hands” and alternative heart suits. In addition, a moose head, a jellyfish, peas and a root of ginger are among the suggestions.
Incidentally, users can submit suggestions for new emojis via the online form at “Emojipedia”. As the platform writes on its website, however, only a small percentage of the privately submitted suggestions are finally implemented.
According to a new study by the messenger service “Slack” and the language app “Duolingo”, 60 percent of all respondents also use emojis in a professional environment when communicating with colleagues.
Especially in times of the ongoing pandemic and home office activities, emojis were able to bring the human component into work messages. However, there can be misunderstandings from time to time.
After all, 26 percent of all employees surveyed stated that the use of an emoji in a work message had already been misunderstood.
The “kiss emoji” 😘 could be an example of this: While the icon expresses purely platonic affection for 39 percent of all respondents, 30 percent of users understand the kissing smiley as a declaration of love.
