🤷 What day is it, nobody knows. One things is true: emoji news grows 🌱  31st December 2019

🍷 Raise a glass to the decision not to implement the white-wine emoji

"White wine" seems to have become the go-to example of emoji color variations. I think (?) most agree it would be fine to have. But complications include whether that defines the existing wine as 'red wine' (even though it currently is intended to be any wine); and where to stop...colored cars? Houses? 🎈? A good summary here from Stephen Harrison.

📱 New Gboard suggestions translate emoji into GIFs, stickers

The emoji keyboard is becoming an all-media keyboard.

🌽 Facebook's Ban on Sexual Emoji Won't Make a Difference

Any emoji can be kinky if you want it to be.

📊 Most used emojis on Twitter for 2019

No major surprises here, but there is still some difference between the most-used emojis on public and private platforms, which I find interesting.

👩🏽‍🦱 Apple updates Clips app, adds Memoji and Animoji

Memoji is technically very cool, especially the video parts. But I can never quite figure out where it is for making a video. Now it's also in Apple's Clips app.

🥴 Man behind iconic smiley face symbol says limited number of emojis restricts freedom of speech

I was going to dunk on this, but I'll just leave it here without comment.

🗓 Unicalendar

I've bought one of these for 2018 and 2019 and they look amazing. Not too late to get this stylish emoji calendar for 2020, from Josh Williams.

🧛 Apple’s new gender-neutral emojis are important for non-binary people

In a lot of ways, neutral emojis are just good for communication. I can send a tweet on behalf of Emojipedia with a 'shrug' and not have to choose if it should be a woman or man. But it's great they've also been seen mostly as a positive addition from non-binary people.

One argument I've seen is "not all enbys look like this!" but...that's equally true for the women and men on the emoji keyboard. Having a third option gives more people more options.

🤭 Disambiguating the hand-over-mouth emoji

A proposal to fix the gap in this emoji, where some variations look like they are snickering, and others look shocked.

🪑 New Emoji Are So Boring—but They Don't Have to Be

It's easier to make the case for new emojis which are boring objects like a 🪑 Chair than to propose specific facial cues or emotions; even if the latter would be more popular. There are moves underway to have fewer emojis approved that few people will use, in future years.

🧇 How I made the yawning face and waffle emoji

The 🥱 Yawning Face emoji is a great addition.

🧑 Apple adds gender-neutral emoji options, boosting LGBTQ representation

Apple often makes the headlines with emoji releases as so many people get them at once. Android users are so fragmented that many don't see emoji updates for years, or at all. Nonetheless, Google led the way on gender neutral changes in 2019.

First by committing to changing many existing emojis to show as gender neutral. For instance - 🤦 Person Facepalming already existed as an emoji separately from the 🤦‍♀️ Woman Facepalming and 🤦‍♂️ Man Facepalming but appeared as a woman on Android (and a man on iOS). Google signally a switch to a gender neutral display in March 2019.

Later, Google's Jennifer Daniel was instrumental in proposing many of the new gender neutral sequences needed to fill gaps such as 🧑‍✈️ Pilot or 🧑‍⚖️ Judge that resulted in Emoji 12.1.

Unicode's position had long been that new neutral emojis wouldn't be added until vendors started supporting the existing ones. The move from Google in March appears to be what led to nearly all emojis having an inclusive option by the end of 2019. Even if Apple actually rolled out more of them to more people first.

🩸 The long-awaited blood emoji is finally here

As always, Unicode pleases everyone and no-one at once with many new emojis. This blood drop is more broad in potential use than earlier proposed period or menstruation emojis, which some view as helpful, and others view as a cop-out for a 'real' period emoji.

🖕 Google flags Fleksy keyboard for mature content over emoji

You might have seen this headline, but the issue has since been resolved

🗺 Tibetan Flag Emoji Requires Support of Major Tech Firms to be Approved

As of 2017 Unicode treats all global subdivisions as valid. That means that Unicode can stay out of which flags to approve or not, as it's made a system where any company can implement any of these at any time. That includes Tibet. The world being how it is though, I can see why global tech companies might be reluctant to support flags like Tibet, Catalonia, Brittany or Kurdistan. Especially if not adding all the other regions of the countries these subdivision fall within, under ISO's classification system.

😌 The Relieved Face Emoji Is the Nicest Emoji

Look at it: 😌 Relieved Face

I love this. I also love that in 2013 when Emojipedia started, major publications writing entire articles about a specific emoji was not something I'd have ever foreseen.

😜 This Emoji Quiz Will Reveal Your Celebrity BFF

I took this quiz in October. Forgot all about it. Took it again now, got the same celeb.

I am Ariana Grande. Here's our one-way conversation earlier in the year.