Why Bing loves Emoji’s
Emoji’s or Emoticons are one of Japan’s most famous exports. Any time you see a happy face or a thumbs up in your emails, social media or text messages, you are part of the Emoji revolution. The English meaning of these little Japanese icons, explains it all. Emoji’s are ‘picture letters.’
Although Emoji’s are relatively new in the western world, they have actually been used in Japan since the early 1990’s – so it’s only taken us a couple of decades to catch on. The appeal of these colourful little splashes of character is obvious:
- Using an Emoji saves people having to physically write what they are feeling
- Emoji’s add a bit of colour to otherwise drab text
- People are stimulated quicker through pictures rather than words
- People are time poor and don’t have time/don’t want to read
- Emoji’s are fun
The use of Emoji’s to express feelings or actions has been very cleverly implemented. Emojis can be used on any android or smart phone and all throughout social media guaranteeing that no user market will be left out. To add the to the interaction, you can even create your own Emoji. The Emoji’s themselves are fantastic marketing tools with users able to quickly express they’re happiness of a service (smiley face), the type of service (pizza shop) or how to get to the service (taxi), the options are endless.
Because of this minefield of interaction, Search Engine giant, Bing, has jumped on the Emoji bandwagon and introduced a new service in their search engine capabilities, searching by Emoji. That’s right, you can insert an Emoji into the search engine bar of Bing and receive the same information as you would by typing the actual word. It will even recognise combinations of Emoji’s if you put a baby Emoji and shower Emoji you would receive the search results for ‘Baby Shower.’ You can search for the defination of Emoji’s too to ensure you are using them in the correct context.
This collaboration with Bing and Emoji has just added a whole new dimension to search engines and content search. Emoji’s are not only becoming a means of expression, but now they are a means of marketing.
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