*By Alisha Haridasani*
Apparently the texting world was very contemplative this year.
According to an online survey, the ‘Thinking Face’ emoji best describes 2018ーmaking it the winner of the Best Emoji of the Year in Emojipedia’s annual awards honoring World Emoji Day.
The other honoree was the ‘Exploding Head,' which won for Best New Emoji.
“These are put out to a popular vote, we put it out to the whole World Emoji Day network,” said Jeremy Burge, Chief Emoji Officer at Emojipedia. “This is the will of the people."
Voting was open for two weeks and closed on Tuesday.
Apple also marked World Emoji Day by revealing that dozens of new emojis will be added to iOS 12 later this year.
Redheads, bald people, and people with graying hair are among Apple’s newcomersーpart of the company’s latest attempts to increase diversity and inclusion among its slate of emojis, said Burge.
A peacock, a caped superhero, a cupcake, and the surprisingly popular mango were also added to iOS 12.
“There are so many mango fans out there,” explained Burge. “Mango’s popular, trust me.”
Apple integrated emojis onto its platform in 2012, catalyzing significant growth in usage, said Burge. In the years since, emojis have rapidly become universal symbols for laughter, love, anger...and whatever the folded hands mean.
There are currently almost 3,000 emojis approved by encoding organization Unicode, and most of them ー around 2,300 ー are used daily. According to data released by Facebook last week, over 900 million emoji-only messages are sent over the Messenger app every day. Emojis even shape our email habits: analytics company Leanplum reports emails with emojis are opened 66 percent more often than emails without the symbols.
For the full segment, [click here.](https://cheddar.com/videos/winners-of-2018-emoji-awards-revealed)
Dr. Celeste González de Bustamante, professor and director of the Center for Border and Global Journalism at the Univerity of Arizona, and Dr. Jeannine E. Relly, professor and director of Global Initiatives at the Center for Border and Global Journalism at the University of Arizona, join Cheddar News to discuss the recent journalist killings in Mexico.
Kim Kardashian’s shapewear brand Skims has doubled its valuation to $3.2 billion. Investors have taken a bet on the success of this brand in the form of fresh funds for the two-year-old company.
Nathan Harding, CEO of Luum, joins Cheddar Innovates to discuss the process of having a robot put on eyelash extensions, and how automation is making its way into the beauty industry
Kevin Yu, Founder and CEO of Sidechef, joins Cheddar Innovates to discuss how it's building a platform to make recipe shopping easy, and how its features help you discover new recipes with the same ingredients to fight the massive problem of food waste.
On this episode of Cheddar Innovates: Sidechef CEO breaks down how it's building a platform to make recipe shopping easy; Luum CEO explains the process of having a robot put on eyelash extensions; A look at Curiosity Stream's new original series, 'Evolve.'
Wednesday marked two years since the basketball legend Kobe Bryant, his daughter Gianna, and seven others died in a tragic helicopter crash. In remembrance, a bronze statue has been temporarily placed at the site with all of the passenger's names included on the memorial.
McDonald's missed on both the top and bottom lines in its Q4 earnings, marking the fourth loss for the fast-food giant in the past eight quarters. It comes as higher costs from food to wages ate into the blue-chip company's profits. George Seay, CEO of investment advisor Annandale Capital, joined Wake Up with Cheddar to discuss the recent numbers and the better-than-expected success of the McPlant burger made with plant-based Beyond Meat. "They're changing with the times, and they have to," Seay noted. "You can just sell a Big Mac to everybody. There's a lot of people who don't want to eat a Big Mac anymore."
