Introduction

1. History

The year was 1999. Cellphone users in Japan were increasingly using picture messages as a way to communicate. Mobile phone companies notced this trend because pictures are much larger than text messages.

A single picture message can be the size of hundreds if not thousands of text messages.

Mobile operators were already struggling to support the needs of 80 million users of a rapidly growing technology.

Engineers were told to fix this problem. The solution? Emoji.

Emoji was born in a Japanese research facility.

DoKoMo i-mode, a mobile phone provider in Japan, was the first entity to allow users to add pictures of commonly used emoticons to their text messages.

Pictures? Emoji is just.. pictures?

Emoji can be pictures. Emoji can be codes. I will get to that next.

2. Impact

Users rejoiced at having emoticons at their fingertips. Emoji made their text 'come alive'.

Wireless network operators loved them too because DoKoMo engineers figured out a way to transfer an emoji as single character.

In a time of text messages with 140 or 60 character limits, and emoji being a single character, it could go a long way.

Continue reading to hear how Steve Jobs of Apple Inc. revolutionized emoji, literally taking down the emoji berlin wall.

The Emoji Story

1. Emoji Is Codes