Emoji news

Emojis have been discussed at the Silk Road trial.


Sad face, sad face, sad face

According to a report by the BBC, a woman in Scotland managed to rack up a £1200 mobile phone bill by adding emoticons to her text messages.  And she is not alone.  A consumer website has received a large number of complaints about the fees being charged by some suppliers who treat emoticons as picture messages rather than text messages.

Happy face

Dating site Match.com surveyed singles and found that those who use emojis go on more dates than those who don’t.  In fact their report concludes that emojis are 'the new aphrodisiac' (Winking face).

Hammer (gavel) emoji

In New York the trial of Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht has heard that a smiley face emoji is an important part of a document which forms part of the evidence.

Meanwhile a teenager in New York has been arrested and charged with making threats after including gun and police emoji, along with police precinct numbers in a Facebook post. 

Emoji miscellanea

  • Brief history of the emoticon/emoji
  • App emojinate is a 'mash-up of Tumblr and Twitter'
  • If you feel you need to brush up your emoji skills, you may wish to explore this page, which translates President Obama's 2015 state of the union address into a mixture of text and emojis
  • Light-hearted IKEA campaign features emoticons to 'help couples communicate' about clutter
  • You can use emojis in 'real life' – Borussia Dortmund’s football star Marco Reus has been celebrating goals by using Apple iPhone emojis….
  • You can use emojis to make art
  • The heart emoji is also a 'word' of the year