Twitter has become the first social platform to offer support for Unicode’s newest batch of emojis, all 72 of them.
The update has been rolled out just in time for World Emoji Day (yes, that’s an actual thing), which takes place on July 17. Among the new icons are the ROFL smiley, nauseated face, lying face, and the (downright creepy) clown face.
Aside from the new emojis, Twitter has also made some modifications to the appearance of existing icons. A number of human appearance emojis now support skin tone modifiers, these include the face palm, shrug, selfie, and man dancing. Elsewhere, additional dimensional details have been added to emojis that represent objects, making them appear less flat on the social network, according to Emojipedia.
The fact that Twitter has beaten most apps and services to incorporate Unicode version 9 emojis also makes them a tad bit harder to use in your tweets. Currently the only way to use them is to copy and paste them from online resources such as Emojipedia.
A selection of the new emojis supported by Twitter
Additionally, seeing as they are not yet supported by iOS and Android, Twitter app users won’t see them on the mobile version of the service, instead the emojis may appear as a question mark box. You can view the comprehensive list of new emojis supported by Twitter here.
You may want to be careful in how you apply them, however, as earlier this year Twitter announced that it will allow businesses to target ads based on the emojis people use in their tweets. Twitter claims that over 110 billion emojis have been tweeted since 2014.
Twitter’s unique emojis have also proven to be big business for the social network, with brands reportedly forking out seven-figure sums for the little hashtag-activated icons.
