Word around Smiley Town is that there are a few new faces soon to pop up everywhere!
One of the most talked about features of social media and text life is the emoji. They are cute little characters used to amplify expression. I remember that being one of the main perks of me switching over to an iPhone, I really liked the emoji feature at the time. One common frustration spoken of often is the fact that people of color are not well represented in the emoji world.
Users complain about it often. Some, like the folks over at MTV Act even reached out to Apple for answers, but they just blamed it on some weird Unicode stipulation. Supposedly they're currently working on diversifying the feature. I'm not quite sure why something like that would take so long, but alright- especially for a company as big as Apple, but alright. Here's a look at a few of the current real life like emojis.
While many users find ways to use these emoji anyway, I just learned of a company called Oju Africa who are taking this issue into their own hands so to speak. While they haven't managed to present the real life emoji in a darker hue, they have taken the traditional yellow smiley set and given them a brown complexion.
The creators of these cute little faces commented that they are simply following global trends, but with an African influence. They really are meeting a global demand with these. While iPhone users can't get them, they are now available on Android Play.
Good to see some diversity is coming, even though there is still room for more. Will you get the new smiley set? Is it even important to you?
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