5 ms·

These look really cool as does the technology, but I don't think I've ever used Emoji past a couple of ASCII smilies. My Android handset seems to have them but

by pling 12y ago

These look really cool as does the technology, but I don't think I've ever used Emoji past a couple of ASCII smilies. My Android handset seems to have them but I don't use them and neither does anyone else I know. Is this a cultural thing I'm missing?

Guvante 12y ago
Yes, from what stories are saying. It may also be in part due to the complexities of asian languages. (Note that this latter part is complete conjecture)
- aninhumer 12y ago
  I think more specifically, East Asian languages are based on symbolic characters already, so using emoji is kind of like using a bunch of new characters, instead of being a completely unfamiliar concept. As someone else mentioned, the two layer input systems used by these languages also make inserting an emoji pretty much the same as typing any other word.
aneisf 12y ago
Yeah, they're wildly popular with just about everyone I know 25 and under, especially on sites like Instagram. There's even been a music video created from them: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qmlJveN9IkI http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qmlJveN9IkI
- pling 12y ago
  Ok thanks. That's well under my age so I understand. Does it replace "TXT SPK" which I'm still too old to use and find terribly annoying? (I'm sounding like a right grumpy old git here)
  - Linell 12y ago
    Less of a replacement and more of a supplement.
  - aneisf 12y ago
    That sort of hyper-abbreviated writing has largely disappeared thanks to spell-check, predictive autocomplete, and so forth. Emoji can certainly stand in for text, and I see plenty of comments and text messages that consist primarily of emoji. But just as often they will accompany text to add personality or mood the way ASCII smilies or textual kaomoji always have on bulletin boards.
    - wyager 12y ago
      >That sort of hyper-abbreviated writing has largely disappeared thanks to spell-check, predictive autocomplete, and so forth Now that I think about it, you're completely write. It's been years since I've seen text-speak.
      - Aeolus98 12y ago
        I think right autocompleted to write for you there.
  - sliverstorm 12y ago
    Just think of Emoji as the ASCII smiley-faces- :) :( :D D: - version 3.0
- weavie 12y ago
  Hmm. 40 year here who really likes using them. I find over instant messaging, which we use a lot at work, when you are just typing text a lot of the real meaning behind what you are saying is lost. Compare the following mentioned during a code review: Your code is crap Your code is crap :-) The first is taken seriously, the second is more of a sarcastic joke. The meaning conveyed is even stronger when the picture is a comical and brightly coloured smiley face rather than an ascii smile.
  - bmm6o 12y ago
    I guess it's cultural, but I wouldn't IM "your code is crap" during a code review with or without an emoticon. If the code really was crap I'd be more constructive. If it wasn't crap I wouldn't say it was. Why wouldn't you just say what you mean?
dublinben 12y ago
If you're not female, a teenager, or from Japan, you're probably just missing the cultural context in which Emoji are used. I'm none of those, but I think Emoji are fun, and use them fairly regularly in casual sms conversations. There is also much more history of their (easy) use on iOS than Android, which did not support them very well, if at all, until recent years.
- PeterGriffin 12y ago
  Come on now, you don't need to be "female, teenager and from Japan". "Emoji" are simply "emoticons" aka "smilies". People all over the world have been familiar with those from instant messengers going back to the 90s. And before graphical "emoticons" people have been using ASCII smilies going back to the 80s on IRC. If someone doesn't get the appeal, the reason is much simpler - they don't text chat a lot. That's fine. If they would, they'd instantly see the need, because plain text can't by itself properly support the subtlety of what one says in a conversation.
libraryatnight 12y ago
I think so. They've become quite popular, I first noticed them from Apple users and wondered how they were creating neat little wing-dings type images in their posts, but now it seems everything has emoji options. Recently getdavidhiggins posted a link on HN to http://emoj.li/ http://emoj.li/ - an Emoji only chat. So it seems to be growing in popularity/ubiquity
hrktb 12y ago
I think it's a lot more useful if you have a layer of inderection on the input. I.e. what you type goes through autocomplete or an IME before being sent to the application you type into. It eases the need to switch to a different keyboard altogether just to input emoji, you just type "heart" and choose from the candidates. That's a reason it is so heavily used in Japan, where they already have a two layer input system anyway. We might also have it easier and easier in ascii based languages as autocomplete like features develop and become ubiquitous.
- snogglethorpe 12y ago
  On all the Japanese devices I've used, emoji input is a separate "keyboard" (or rather a different mode in the standard keyboard). Some Japanese keyboards will sometimes suggest emoji during input conversion (the normal kana->kanji step), but it's a somewhat haphazard way of inputting them, and it's often easier just use the dedicated emoji input. The reason seems fairly clear to me: many emoji encode nuances that don't map easily to single words or small compounds in a way that's easy for a user to predict... [My old non-smart phone would suggest some emoji during input conversion (e.g. if you convert "ねこ", it would suggest "🐱" and "(=^ェ^=)" as well as "猫"), but my current (Japanese) Android phone doesn't seem to do any of that at all (using the vendor Japanese keyboard); to input emoji you need to use the emoji input... :]
  - kalleboo 12y ago
    The Apple iOS and OS X Japanese keyboards suggest emoji for words along side the Kanji (your ねこ example) and that seems to be the main way the people around me enter them (I'm in Japan). It's easier to use since you don't have to go paging through 20 pages of emoji hunting for a particular one. I have yet to use Android since they added emoji support so I'm not sure what's going on there.
    - snogglethorpe 12y ago
      Are the people around you using iphones? The iOS Japanese keyboard suggests a lot more emoji during normal input than the old pre-smart or Android Japanese phones I've used.... Anyway, the main point I'm trying to make is that the method of Japanese language input doesn't seem to adequately explain why emoji are so popular in Japan, because the support for conversion-based emoji input is haphazard even in Japan.
batiudrami 12y ago
They're used a bit differently to traditional emoticons - while emoticons are used to convey tone since text can be ambiguous, emojis tend to add 'flavour' to some text - things like icons of food, drinks, animals etc - so they generally have very little purpose, but make a message more fun.
BrandonLive 12y ago
I use them in my apps. Very useful for many situations, and automatically able to handle different scale factors, high contrast modes, etc. Microsoft also has a bunch of useful glyphs in their Segoe UI Symbol font, for the same purpose.

by pling 12y ago

Guvante 12y ago

Yes, from what stories are saying. It may also be in part due to the complexities of asian languages. (Note that this latter part is complete conjecture)

aninhumer 12y ago
I think more specifically, East Asian languages are based on symbolic characters already, so using emoji is kind of like using a bunch of new characters, instead of being a completely unfamiliar concept. As someone else mentioned, the two layer input systems used by these languages also make inserting an emoji pretty much the same as typing any other word.

aneisf 12y ago

Yeah, they're wildly popular with just about everyone I know 25 and under, especially on sites like Instagram. There's even been a music video created from them: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qmlJveN9IkI http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qmlJveN9IkI

pling 12y ago
Ok thanks. That's well under my age so I understand. Does it replace "TXT SPK" which I'm still too old to use and find terribly annoying? (I'm sounding like a right grumpy old git here)
- Linell 12y ago
  Less of a replacement and more of a supplement.
- aneisf 12y ago
  That sort of hyper-abbreviated writing has largely disappeared thanks to spell-check, predictive autocomplete, and so forth. Emoji can certainly stand in for text, and I see plenty of comments and text messages that consist primarily of emoji. But just as often they will accompany text to add personality or mood the way ASCII smilies or textual kaomoji always have on bulletin boards.
  - wyager 12y ago
    >That sort of hyper-abbreviated writing has largely disappeared thanks to spell-check, predictive autocomplete, and so forth Now that I think about it, you're completely write. It's been years since I've seen text-speak.
    - Aeolus98 12y ago
      I think right autocompleted to write for you there.
- sliverstorm 12y ago
  Just think of Emoji as the ASCII smiley-faces- :) :( :D D: - version 3.0
weavie 12y ago
Hmm. 40 year here who really likes using them. I find over instant messaging, which we use a lot at work, when you are just typing text a lot of the real meaning behind what you are saying is lost. Compare the following mentioned during a code review: Your code is crap Your code is crap :-) The first is taken seriously, the second is more of a sarcastic joke. The meaning conveyed is even stronger when the picture is a comical and brightly coloured smiley face rather than an ascii smile.
- bmm6o 12y ago
  I guess it's cultural, but I wouldn't IM "your code is crap" during a code review with or without an emoticon. If the code really was crap I'd be more constructive. If it wasn't crap I wouldn't say it was. Why wouldn't you just say what you mean?

dublinben 12y ago

If you're not female, a teenager, or from Japan, you're probably just missing the cultural context in which Emoji are used. I'm none of those, but I think Emoji are fun, and use them fairly regularly in casual sms conversations. There is also much more history of their (easy) use on iOS than Android, which did not support them very well, if at all, until recent years.

PeterGriffin 12y ago
Come on now, you don't need to be "female, teenager and from Japan". "Emoji" are simply "emoticons" aka "smilies". People all over the world have been familiar with those from instant messengers going back to the 90s. And before graphical "emoticons" people have been using ASCII smilies going back to the 80s on IRC. If someone doesn't get the appeal, the reason is much simpler - they don't text chat a lot. That's fine. If they would, they'd instantly see the need, because plain text can't by itself properly support the subtlety of what one says in a conversation.

libraryatnight 12y ago

I think so. They've become quite popular, I first noticed them from Apple users and wondered how they were creating neat little wing-dings type images in their posts, but now it seems everything has emoji options. Recently getdavidhiggins posted a link on HN to http://emoj.li/ http://emoj.li/ - an Emoji only chat. So it seems to be growing in popularity/ubiquity

hrktb 12y ago

I think it's a lot more useful if you have a layer of inderection on the input. I.e. what you type goes through autocomplete or an IME before being sent to the application you type into. It eases the need to switch to a different keyboard altogether just to input emoji, you just type "heart" and choose from the candidates. That's a reason it is so heavily used in Japan, where they already have a two layer input system anyway. We might also have it easier and easier in ascii based languages as autocomplete like features develop and become ubiquitous.

snogglethorpe 12y ago
On all the Japanese devices I've used, emoji input is a separate "keyboard" (or rather a different mode in the standard keyboard). Some Japanese keyboards will sometimes suggest emoji during input conversion (the normal kana->kanji step), but it's a somewhat haphazard way of inputting them, and it's often easier just use the dedicated emoji input. The reason seems fairly clear to me: many emoji encode nuances that don't map easily to single words or small compounds in a way that's easy for a user to predict... [My old non-smart phone would suggest some emoji during input conversion (e.g. if you convert "ねこ", it would suggest "🐱" and "(=^ェ^=)" as well as "猫"), but my current (Japanese) Android phone doesn't seem to do any of that at all (using the vendor Japanese keyboard); to input emoji you need to use the emoji input... :]
- kalleboo 12y ago
  The Apple iOS and OS X Japanese keyboards suggest emoji for words along side the Kanji (your ねこ example) and that seems to be the main way the people around me enter them (I'm in Japan). It's easier to use since you don't have to go paging through 20 pages of emoji hunting for a particular one. I have yet to use Android since they added emoji support so I'm not sure what's going on there.
  - snogglethorpe 12y ago
    Are the people around you using iphones? The iOS Japanese keyboard suggests a lot more emoji during normal input than the old pre-smart or Android Japanese phones I've used.... Anyway, the main point I'm trying to make is that the method of Japanese language input doesn't seem to adequately explain why emoji are so popular in Japan, because the support for conversion-based emoji input is haphazard even in Japan.

batiudrami 12y ago

They're used a bit differently to traditional emoticons - while emoticons are used to convey tone since text can be ambiguous, emojis tend to add 'flavour' to some text - things like icons of food, drinks, animals etc - so they generally have very little purpose, but make a message more fun.

BrandonLive 12y ago

I use them in my apps. Very useful for many situations, and automatically able to handle different scale factors, high contrast modes, etc. Microsoft also has a bunch of useful glyphs in their Segoe UI Symbol font, for the same purpose.