Social Networking
WhatsApp Launches Its Own Set Of Emoji
Appearing in Monday’s beta release of WhatsApp for Android has included a new set of emojis which are highly inspired by Apple’s designs. Ever since started, they have been dishing out iOS-style emojis that are different style from those of Facebook and Messenger’s, adding to a general air of cross-platform confusion.
WhatsApp looks to be taking the path like Facebook and Twitter in creating their own custom emoji set within the app. WhatsApp emojis are only visible in latest beta version 2.17.363 for Android users, and are likely to be rolled out to more people in future”
At a glance, you will not be able to notice the difference from Apple’s own emojis. It appears that the brief for this project may have been “take Apple’s emojis, and change them enough so we can call them our own”. Was this a bad thing? Perhaps not, given how people are change-averse.
According to Emojipedia, who spotted the emojis first, they speculate that “It’s worth noting that this is only a beta, and these emojis might change before public release, or not even make a public release,”.
The symbols are still set in beta so it’s possible they will still be tweaked before introduction.
WhatsApp is supporting the latest approved emoji versions from Unicode’s Emoji 5.0 so will contain native emojis that Apple has yet to adopt as well.
Some of the noticeable changes include:
- Apple’s ghost emoji has a black eye while WhatsApp’s does not.
- Apple’s secretary emoji is wearing a purple top whereas WhatsApp’s is wearing a blue top and has a shorter bob.
- The Apple pistol is green whereas the WhatsApp version is brown.
- In the Apple version there is just one fried egg but in the WhatsApp version, there are two.
- There are also new fantasy emoji which are not available on iOS.
- WhatsApp was first to implement the middle finger emoji and briefly had an emoji for the Olympic rings.
The changes highlight an increasing problem for social media services: cross-platform communication confusion, driven largely by Android manufacturer fragmentation.
