I’m going to confess this right now – I love emoji. And I’m not alone. With a new emoji-only messaging app set to launch, it’s undeniable these little icons have made their way into the hearts, tweets and instant messages of social media users right around the world.

But before we take a look at how, and why, can we please get some technical stuff out of the way? Emoji and emoticons aren’t the same thing. Emoticons traditionally refer to facial expressions and symbols created from character combinations, where you type a semi-colon followed by a bracket to create your own smiley face. Emoji, on the other hand, are the predefined pictographs and icons we’re all adding to our smartphone keyboards that allow us to bring text-based messages to life with facial expressions, coloured hearts, a Halloween pumpkin, a spikey blowfish, and a chicken drumstick. So next time you message your friend a choc-chip cookie, a pair of bikinis, or a telescope, don’t call them emoticons. Rookie error.

Also, don’t go overboard. Three repeated emoji is the maximum needed to prove a point, and for your own sake, steer clear of the gun, bomb and volcano. They’re way too apocalyptic for day-to-day conversation. Unless of course it is the end of the world, in which case, go ahead and use whichever emoji you want.

So why are they so popular? In this internet age of decreasing attention spans, we’re always looking for shorter and more efficient ways to communicate – and we can do that with emoji. Best of all, they’re universal. No matter what language you speak, if your friend messages you a bowl of ramen soup, they probably want Japanese cuisine for dinner. If they use an American flag, chances are they’re patriotic and if they use a single red shoe… Well I have no idea what that actually means.

Overwhelmingly though, I believe their popularity lies in the power of visuals. As the old cliché goes ‘a picture tells 1000 words’ and that especially holds true in today’s digital world. All we have to do is look at recent web stats for picture-proof; Every day 350 million photos are uploaded to Facebook and 60 million images are posted on Instagram. Given we’re so drawn to images, when given the opportunity to use emoji in SMS, iMessage and WhatsApp, and on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, it’s way too much fun to resist. Plus, expressing emotion isn’t always easy and emoji allow us to show how we feel without getting too deep. Blowing a kiss and sending a pink love heart are relationship savors for those of us who are emotionally unavailable.

Word of warning though: be cautious in your use because it’s easy to over-emoji. What starts as harmless fun in iMessage can become excessive. Do you relate? Do you believe emoji can express the full range of human emotions? Do you feel you need to exaggerate your emoji for impact? Or, do you find yourself enthusiastically inserting emoji into even the most mundane SMS? If you answered yes to any of these questions, my advice is to back away from your keyboard. I can help you, but first you have to help yourself, OK?

Globally, emoji are so popular that soon we’ll have emojli – a network where users can only communicate with, you guessed it, emoji – no text allowed. Thousands of people have already signed up to reserve usernames (myself included) which all have to be made from emoji. According to news reports, 250 new emoji are on the way as part of the Unicode 7.0 update, and even Seinfeld-inspired emoji have been created. That’s right – emoji representing Jerry, Elaine, George and Kramer (they will be named Jary, Gerge, Elane and Kragnor) – plus other characters and even classic episode icons like Junior Mints, a loaf of marble rye and pretzels (“These pretzels are making me thirsty!”).

As much as I love Seinfeld, and am already dreaming up ways to include an Elaine-inspired emoji into every message I compose, I’m hoping this won’t motivate heaps of companies and brands to get on the emoji bandwagon. I mean, I do think we’re missing some fundamentals. For example, it’d be awesome to have emoji for: fingers crossed, feeling ill, sarcastic, yellow brick road, selfies, Buffy, Star Wars, Kim Kardashian, Boo and Grumpy Cat. But as much as I want my own emoji addition wish list to come true, I don’t want to see our emoji vocab polluted with commercially driven reality TV talent show emoji and new fast food breakfast menu emoji. Because if we do get swamped, it’s inevitable that in an effort to cope with an overload of emoji, another new social network will launch that will ban the use of emoji altogether. And that would be a disaster. Sad face.

Posted on 7/16/14

Jordana Borensztajn is a comedian, corporate speaker and social media trainer. She is also an emoji advocate. Tweet her emoji messages any time at @JordanaOZ, or connect with her using emoji on Instagram and Facebook. If Jordana doesn’t understand your emoji message, she promises to creatively interpret it. Smiley face.

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