Happy World Emoji Day! Why is today World Emoji Day, you ask? Because July 17 is the date famously displayed in the calendar emoji. And why not celebrate our little graphic friends who have added so much to modern communication?
Emoji use is very much on the rise. Since they were introduced in 2007, emojis have seen as much as a 40 percent increase in usage growth. In May, Instagram shared that half of all of their posts now contain emojis. And last year, the folks at the FiveThirtyEight blog studied which emojis were the most popular on Twitter, with hearts in first place, followed by "joy," with a swift follow-up from "unamused."
Today, the social innovators over at Spredfast are celebrating World Emoji Day with a live emoji tracker that shows which emojis are being used most often on Twitter. True to form: at the time this post was written, "Joy" was in first place, with "Heart Eyes" and "Blush" following behind.