Emojis
Who would have ever thought we would be corresponding with pictures to share our emotions versus using words -- and it is not part of a board game!
History
Here is a little emoji history for you.
- 1982 - Scott Fahlman sent an email, which included the first emoticon: :-) believes emoji's to be ugly. (Perhaps he misses the imagery of poetic written styles of days ago.)
- 1997 - SoftBank (formerly known as J-Phone) released the SkyWalker DP-211SW mobile phone with the world's first known emoji set. The set included 90 characters, with the poo emoji being the most iconic. The emoji's were only available in black and white colors, with themes of clock, travel, weather, hobbies, holidays, animals, and emotion punctuation.
- 1999 - Shigetak Kuritas created 176 emojis for the Japanese mobile phone operator NTT DoCoMo's integrated mobile internet service "I-mode" which allowed for 250 characters to communicate in a short but expressive way. Colors were added to the emoji's with numbers, more emotion, business, food, weather, horoscope months, and phases of the moon.
- 2013 -The word "emoji" was added to the Oxford Dictionary. Emojipedia was created by Jeremy Burge, and is considered to the number one resource on emoji.
- 2015 - SwiftKey analyzed the most used emojis in different countries:
- The French used the heart emoji.
- Arabic used the flowers and plant emojis.
- Russia use the romantic emoji.
- 2016 - Emojis are becoming the "world's fastest-growing language." Specialists may be needed to translate in certain circumstances!
- 2017 - Emojis have even starred in their own movie and have been written about: "The Emoji Code: The Linguistics Behind Smiley Faces and Scaredy Cats" by linguist Vyvyan Evans. (There will probably be more in the future!)
For more history on emojis, visit emojitimeline.com
What color is your heart? 
Similar to flowers, heart emojis can have a different meaning, depending on color.
Red Heart, reminds me of red roses, and is the classic symbol of love.
Orange Heart, reminds me of coral roses, and means friendship and caring.
Green Heart, reminds me of yellow roses, and it has a few different things. If you have been hurt by someone and are angry, a green heart may mean jealousy. Green hearts also can mean you love the planet -- it may mean a symbol of Earth or nature -- or it could mean it is St Patty's Day!
Blue Heart - if someone sends you this one, they really believe in you. The color blue is the color of water and sky -- it brings about a sense of calming. This one is not recommended to use on social media.
Purple Heart - this heart is an expression of physical attraction, or when you are wanting others to see you have a love for luxury.
Brown Heart - this one seems obvious, but in case you didn't know -- it is the chocolate covered heart! And who doesn't really enjoy chocolate? It's the warm fuzzy of hearts.
Black Heart - this heart means sorrow or dark humor, you could use this sharing sad news on social media.
White Heart - this heart means love, which completes the rainbow of heart colors. Or it could mean that you prefer white chocolate.
What is your favorite?
We asked our a few team members about their most used emojis:
- I like the hearts and smiley faces!
- My frequently used emojis are the kiss, applause and high five because now that we have limited social contact, we all need to lift up one another's spirits as high as we can.
- Rainbows and unicorns.
- Thumbs up.
- Smiley face with stuck-out tongue.
- I use the thumbs up a lot or the smiley face.
- I use the red heart -- let's face it, we can all use a little more love in our lives!
As you see, we all have our favorites we use to express ourselves in our world today. One of the most recent ones I've used on Facebook is the Smiley Face hugging a heart -- the "care" emoji. There is so much going on in our world today -- some good, some bad -- and sharing cares with my social media friends may be just the boost they need to get through the day.
Writing in emojis remind me a little of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics -- have we come full circle? Only time will tell! Meanwhile, we will enjoy sharing our thoughts, comments, and short expressive texts via emojis!
