Twitter’s ‘Branded Emojis’

I wrote yesterday, with regard the Trump campaign’s spat with Twitter over what the New York Times described as “Twitter had killed a #CrookedHillary emoji”:

I can’t believe the Times didn’t put quotes around that hashtag. And whatever it is they’re talking about, a sticker or whatever, is not an emoji.

I stand by that — I think the word emoji should be used exclusively for the icons in the official Unicode spec. Something that is like an emoji but not in the spec is a sticker or an icon or whatever, but it’s not an emoji.

Obviously, others disagree, because Twitter is selling these hashtag icons as “Branded Emojis”. I think that’s a gross misuse of the word. (This is another one of those Twitter things about which I was unaware because they’re only visible in Twitter’s first-party clients, which I almost never use.)

★ Thursday, 15 December 2016