Twitter is on fire this week! The once super popular app revealed recently that they had lost over 2 million users. Yikes. Not good news for Twitter's pocket book, but such news was then followed by unveiling some new features like their new algorithmic timeline that gives users the option to easily follow the best Tweets in their timeline. And why is it that people still flock to twitter? The answer is simple, custom emoji's and hash-tag based voting and guess what? This weekend NBA fans get both! Good play Twitter, good play!

Twitter debuted these custom emojis in light of NBA's All-Star Weekend in Toronto. The emojis are active from tonight. Users will be able to activate these images by tweeting a hashtag with the players first and last name. Not all of the emojis are of the actual players, some like #kobebryant get a black mamba for nickname or #KevinDurant will get you the number 35. Oh and theres more! They've also debuted emoji's for the entire TNT broadcast team too. Twitter didn't want to leave anyone out of the loop!

Twitter will also be playing a huge role in selecting this year MVP! Unlike last year where users only incorporated a portion of the votes this year the only way fans can vote is on twitter. Users can vote by using the players full name and using the hashtag “#KiaAllStarMVP” to recognize the award’s official sponsor. Fans votes will be weighed as 25 percent of the overall vote counts and guess what? User retweets will count up to 100 as extra votes! What a smart way to get NBA fans back on twitter and involved! Social media is changing sports marketing forever.

The social media race is firing up once again as Twitter tries to regain its popularity. And we do not blame one bit either. It was just last week when Snapchats Live Score geofilters saw 20 million views from 51 different games. The competition is heating up and we cannot wait to see who scores next! For now, the ball might be back into Twitters court.

Source: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/twitter-unveils-custom-emojis-nba-all-star-games-ben-ramedani