The Unicode Working Group presents:
Emoji in Unicode: Its History and Future - from Galapagos Mobile to the World
A talk with Katsuhiko Momoi.
Emoji in mobile devices had its origin in Japan in the late 1990’s. It quickly gained acceptance among Japanese mobile users as a way to express emotions and personal feelings. Their uses were, however, constrained by carrier incompatibility in character encoding and icon designs. The Emoji Encoding Proposal was started to address the former issue -- that of ensuring common character encoding for a common set of Emoji. Since Emoji was added to the Unicode Standard in 2010, it has gone through surprising acceptance and growth in the United States and elsewhere. Emoji has gone “international” as it were. Their widespread uses in the world have presented the Unicode Consortium with challenges and issues to solve. In this presentation, Kat Momoi traces the history of Emoji in Japan, its uses there and elsewhere, its process through standardization to ISO/Unicode standards, and issues the Unicode Consortium is now attempting to address for implementers and users of Emoji around the world. And finally the issue of where Emoji is going next.
