Twitter has added support for several new emojis just a few weeks after Apple started supporting new emojis that included taco, cheese slice and rolling eyes. On Wednesday, the micro-blogging firm rolled out support for Unicode 8.0 emojis in its ‘Twemoji’ icon set. Users will be able to enjoy those fancy new icons on Twitter even if their devices are not fully compatible.
More emojis for users
It is a great idea by Twitter to keep up with the latest icons, and users can now go ahead and send tacos, unicorns and other icons on the platform. Users tired of just giving a thumbs up can now share pictographs of their own with a skin color that does not seem like its suffering from jaundice. Twitter noted that these emojis will work even when tweets are embedded elsewhere.
On the Web, Twitter converts emojis into its own set of cartoon-like characters and icons, and this is open source, so anyone can use it. Earlier this year, the company made racially diverse emoji available, and now it has added support. Users on iOS 8.3 can select these emojis by tapping and holding on a person emoji. Support for racially diverse emoji on Android has not yet been rolled out by Google.
What trended on Twitter and Facebook in 2015?
Separately, Twitter and Facebook have released their top 10 lists as 2015 comes to an end. The reports by the social media sites offered some surprises both culturally and politically. The top position on both Twitter and Facebook was held by Caitlyn Jenner and One Direction.
Caitlyn Jenner’s new Twitter account garnered over 1 million followers in just four hours – the fastest ever. This won her a Guinness World Record for the fastest account to touch that mark. She stood at the eighth spot on Facebook’s list of most mentioned entertainers.
The boy band One Direction claimed four of the top five retweets of 2015. Harry Styles post was retweeted the highest number of times (730,298) followed by 567,193 retweets of a message from One Direction’s Zayn Malik and 496,729 retweets of a Liam Payne message. The most used music hashtag in 2015 was #OneDirection.
On Facebook, President Obama was the most-mentioned politician, followed by presidential candidates Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton and Sen. Bernie Sanders. “Even a year before US voters go to the polls, the race for the 2016 Presidential Election was a huge point of global conversation in 2015,” Facebook said.
