What is the most used Twitter emoji of all time?

Trivia 7 of 30

What is the most used Twitter emoji of all time?

Emojis have certainly come a long way since their introduction to the world by NTT Docomo, a Japanese cell phone company, in 1999. Although they were an immediate hit, it wasn’t until 2010 that the symbols were standardized and incorporated into Unicode. That year, 722 different emoji were released for Android and iPhone (CNN.com). Today there are 2,789 emoji in the official Unicode list.

The word emoji is a combination of three Japanese words: 絵 (“e,” picture), 文 (“mo,” write) and 字 (“ji,” character) (CNN.com). It’s just a coincidence that the word sounds like it comes from the English word “emotion”.

The most used emojis

As of January 2023, “Face with Tears of Joy” 😂 has been used over 3.7 billion times on Twitter—more than the next two emojis combined—to convey that something is really funny or pleasing (EmojiTracker.com). For those of the feline persuasion, you might also consider “cat face with tears of joy” 😹 (Emojipedia.org), used over 613 million times.

“Red Heart” ❤️ is the next most popular emoji on Twitter. It is also the platform’s overall favorite heart, having been used over 2 billion times to express feelings of love and romance. In contrast, “Brown Heart” 🤎 is the least used of the nine colored heart emojis: ❤️🧡💛💚💙💜🖤🤍🤎 (EmojiTracker.com).

In third place is “Loudly Crying Face” 😭, which has been used over 1.7 billion times to convey inconsolable grief, uncontrollable laughter, pride, or overwhelming joy (EmojiTracker.com).

In fourth and last place on our list, “Smiling Face with Heart-Eyes” 😍 (which is used to convey enthusiastic feelings of love, infatuation, and adoration) has only been used 1.34 billion times (EmojiTracker.com).

Where new emojis come from

Anyone can propose a new emoji to Unicode, the organization that develops, maintains, and promotes software internationalization. Some of the newest emoji released over the past few years include: “Piñata” 🪅, “Pinched Fingers” 🤌, and “Smiling Face with Tear” 🥲 (Emoji 13.0, 2020); and “Melting Face” 🫠, “Face with Peeking Eye” 🫣, and “Pregnant Man” 🫃 (Emoji 14.0, 2021).

The following 31 emojis were approved by Unicode in 2022:

World Emoji Day

World Emoji Day is celebrated every year on July 17. Why July 17? Because that’s the date displayed on the iOS calendar icon. It’s not a randomly selected date either. July 17 was the date that iCal for Mac was first announced at MacWorld Expo in 2002.