Instagram Defines Its Most Popular Emoji, Which Are Taking Over Our Speech

Instagram software engineer Thomas Dimson spent, by the looks of an new blog post, a pretty substantial amount of time looking at emoji use across the platform. What he found is that emoji are pretty ...
Instagram Defines Its Most Popular Emoji, Which Are Taking Over Our Speech
Written by Josh Wolford

Instagram software engineer Thomas Dimson spent, by the looks of an new blog post, a pretty substantial amount of time looking at emoji use across the platform.

What he found is that emoji are pretty much taking over our language. In fact, he says that nearly half of all captions and comments on Instagram contain emoji. In late 2011, when Apple first introduced the emoji keyboard, that percentage was just 10%.

And if you want to know who leads to pack in emoji use, it’s Finland (63% of all text). The US is way down on the list, with only 38% of text containing emoji.

The whole deep dive is interesting, and worth a read. But the most interesting part is Dimson’s use of algorithms and context to rank the most-used emoji and to provide their meanings.

Apparently, laughing so hard that you cry is the most popular emoji expression around. Here’s some of the most popular emoji on Instagram and, according to the social network, what they mean:

And if you’re wondering why people use the salsa dancer emoji, it’s because their getting #turntup, apparently.

Emoji is taking over.

Just don’t use the eggplant.

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