💬 The Wrap
Well this is strange. Last year Samsung removed emojis relating to Japan including the 🗾 map of Japan, and the crossed 🎌 Japanese flags. In a quiet update last week, these came back but with some changes that make it look like this might have been an accident.
In case you missed it, the 2017 emoji list was announced a few weeks back. It's expected these will come to most platforms in the second half of this year.
I have already noticed signs of Facebook testing some of these new emojis on-and-off - which tends to be a bit easier to do with web-based emoji sets. And speaking of social networks, Twitter just added emoji search!
📰 News
👩🎨 Windows 10 Creators Update Emoji Changelog
Windows 10 Creators Update was released this month. Among the changes: support for all the emojis from 2016 including genders and professions. See the full list here.
🤞 Samsung Fixes Fingers Crossed Emoji
Many were amused to see Samsung include an extra digit on their fingers crossed emoji last year. In the latest Samsung Experience update, this has been fixed. There have been three minor emoji updates from Samsung in 2017 already.
🦄 EmojiOne Goes Freemium
EmojiOne, the previously open-source emoji set, has released a major update and a change in strategy. Still free for many uses, the latest version of this project now requires a premium licence for some types commercial use.
💭 Interesting
💁🏼♂️ Unicode Emoji Explainer by Mark Davis
Mark David, President and Co-founder of the Unicode Consortium, gives a great overview of the complexities involved with emoji support in Unicode. Be sure to enable the notes to get the full information.
🥘 Apple Fixes Paella Emoji
A long-awaited change by many in Valencia: Paella uses traditional ingredients in iOS 10.3.
👩🏾 Why There Aren't Black Family Emojis
Aside from redheads, emojis for black families are some of the most requested from Emojipedia users. The issue is more complicated than it might first appear.
⛰ Introducing the First Climbing Emoji
A set of climbers are included as part of Emoji 5.0. The new character is called Person Climbing, and there are ZWJ Sequences for the female and male variations. Thanks to Sasha DiGiulian who consulted on the Emojipedia sample image.
🇻🇳 5 reasons the world needs an emoji for Vietnamese 'banh mi' now
Emoji foods are tricky in that there are so many that could be added, yet many look somewhat similar to others. While a banh mi looks distinct from our sandwich emoji image, who is to say that should be the case? Is there scope for multiple sandwich-related emojis? Now I'm hungry.
🙋 Arabs still desperately need these 7 emojis
We get a number of requests for a hummus emoji at Emojipedia, I can confirm that.
🌚 The Dark Side of Slack’s New Emoji Statuses
Slack added support for emoji statuses. Not everyone is pleased.
⚔️ How a Slack UI change sparked the Ars Technica civil war
One emoji benefit: they are bright and colourful and grab your attention. One emoji drawback: they are bright and colourful and grab your attention. More on Slack's emoji statuses.
💞 The Best & Worst Emojis To Send Someone You Want To Date
Emojis women reply to: 💁 😋 😛 😏. Emojis men reply to: 😏 😜 😂 😌.
💬 Emojipedia LIVE Chat on Product Hunt
Emojipedia is hosting a live chat on Thursday May 4th at 1pm ET. Ask a question now or send a reminder to show up on the day. All questions welcome!
The 😬 emoji is the best emoji—long live the grimacing emoji
"It helps people navigate the awkwardness of asking for favors"
💟 Sponsor
🎤 TNW Conference
Remember Casey Neistat wakeboarding on the canals of Amsterdam in a Tuxedo last year? That was his entrance to The Next Web Conference. This year's TNW line up includes Kevin Rose (internet superstar), Ryan Hoover (founder Product Hunt), Piera Gelardi (co-founder Refinery29), David Karp (founder Tumblr) and also: me (🎉). May 18-19 in Amsterdam. I'll be arriving by bike, not wakeboard.
🎙 Podcasts
♨️ Why is There No Pie Emoji?
Kenzi Wilbur from Food52 looks at why there isn't a pie emoji, and then submits a proposal for one.
🤗 Lastly
Thanks to all of you who have subscribed to get this email. I hope you're enjoying it, but do feel free to send feedback on Twitter for anything you like or don't like! It's a pleasure sending this to all 10,000 of you each month.
And if you're looking to kill some time and test your emoji skills, see how you go at my 🤓 emoji "tech companies" quiz! (I have a good feeling you'll do better than Kori and Jon did)