Monitor emoji usage in real-time

Emoji are used for everything from basic communication, to diversity promotion, and even as a means of learning to code. While dismissed by some as the language of the millennial or the hard-of-thinking, emoji have their place in the modern lexicon, and an Australian company has launched a tool to show how they are being used.

Ad agency The Works has created a real-time emoji tracker that reveals how the handy little icons are being used right now. The company says of the recent additions to our language, "this is not a bastardisation but the next evolution of how we communicate". So what's the most popular emoji at the moment?

The project focuses on emoji use in Australia, and you can see which emoji are the most popular at any moment across the entire country or in a particular region. The constantly-updating charts show that there's a lot of love and a lot of laughter going on in Australia -- LOL and heart emoji top the charts across the country.

It would be interesting to see if Australia's emoji use is representative of the rest of the world, so if any coders fancy taking on the challenge, now is the time to get to work!

Explaining how the tracker was created, The Works says:

We sampled emoji use on the top 3 messaging platforms and compared them to emoji use on Twitter. We found a 94 percent correlation and so we use Twitter as our main source. Messaging platforms are encrypted and so there is no legal way to take samples at scale to achieve this analysis. We have written code that matches all standard unicode emojis with their use in tweets which are geocoded for Australia; every time we get a match, the counter on the tracker moves up one for that emoji.

You can keep an eye on the charts at the emoji tracker website.

Photo credit: bontom / Shutterstock