What a fun holiday! World Emoji Day is an unofficial holiday that's been celebrated on July 17 since 2014. It was created by Jeremy Burge, the London-based founder of Emojipedia. Burge decided on July 17 because that's the date that's shown on the calendar emoji. Here are 10 other facts about emojis!
- More emojis are sent through Facebook Messenger on New Year’s Eve than on any other day, a fact that applies to every country in which Facebook operates.
- The laughing crying face is the most popular emoji in the U.S. and the U.K., while the birthday cake is the most used emoji in Australia, Canada and Germany.
- People are using the heart emoji twice as much on Facebook compared to last year.
- More than 900 million emojis are sent every day without text on Messenger–or as Facebook put it, “A 😀[smile emoji] is worth 1,000 words.”
- Posts aren’t immune to emojis either: more than 700 million of them turn up in Facebook posts every day.
- Half of all comments on Instagram include emojis.
- The term "emoji" comes from the Japanese words "e" (means picture) and "moji" (character).
- The word has been used in Japanese since 1928, but was first seen in English in 1997.
- The word emoji has appeared in Oxford Dictionaries since 2013.
- In 2015 Oxford Dictionaries named the Face with Tears of Joy emoji as their Word of the Year.