You may have heard a thing or two about emojis in the past, and now we are excited to announce a BRAND NEW widget that can help make sense of all of those faces, icons, and more!

Before we introduce you to our Emoji Cloud, let’s pause for a brief history lesson ?

The Origin of Emojis ?

Emojis were first introduced by Shigetaka Kurita who was part of the team preparing for the 1999 debut of NTT Docomo’s i-mode, or the world’s first major mobile Internet system. With face-to-face conversation, one can usually determine the other person’s mood from vocal cues and facial expressions. However, their absence from new mobile mediums (texting, email, etc.) was being offset by this accompanying increase in miscommunication.

Enter ?????

Kurita’s Japanese heritage played a huge role in developing the first set of emojis. For inspiration, Kurita looked to different elements of his childhood, including manga and kanji. “In Japanese comics, there are a lot of different symbols. People draw expressions like the person with the bead of sweat, you know, or like, when someone gets an idea and they have the lightbulb. Additionally, the term emoji is a loanword from Japanese, and comes from e ‘picture’ + moji ‘letter, character.’”

Over the last few years, emoji usage has gone beyond the world of texting teenagers. These images are now embraced as a nuanced form of expression, and they can cross language barriers. Furthermore, emojis are being used by major companies as part of marketing and communications campaigns.

Examples of Emoji Use In Marketing, and more:

Back to our exciting announcement…

Over the last few months, we have been testing an emoji cloud widget against news and events with high volumes emoticons. Because emojis allow for immediate visual mobile content creation (while being fun and easily sharable), we proceeded forward and created our Emoji Cloud.

What does the emoji cloud actually do?
From ?to? , if it is being shared on Twitter, our Emoji Cloud will empower you to see and analyze it. This visualization allows you to determine which Emojis are most frequently being used around topics and issues of your choice.

Emojis are also an instant way of revealing emotional reactions. You can discover how people are feeling in public statements, by which Emojis they choose to share.

Additional Cool Features ?
With the Emoji Cloud widget, you can hover over an individual emoji, see its specific meaning and how often it is currently being or has been used. You can also choose how many Emojis you want to display at a time, and if there is something you do not want to see, you have the option of excluding any Emoji within the cloud.