The Most Popular Emoji Right This Second
Ever wonder if you're the only one obsessively using the cha-cha girl emoji? Now you can stack your usage against everyone else's with Emojitracker. The new site uses "a number of technologies, notably the twitter streaming API, redis, SSE" to map out how many people are tweeting each emoji at that very moment. Right now, the most popular emoji is the "black heart suit" (at left) with a pretty healthy lead over the next most popular one: the laughing-so-hard-I'm-crying-face — once again proving that indeed it is okay to use the little pictures to flirt, despite what some people say.
RELATED: Quote of the Day: Justin Bieber's Share of Twitter
For those of you still gunning for the smiling poop as the best-ever, keep in mind, some people use emojis primarily for texting, not on Twitter, so this isn't really showing the whole picture. Plus, people probably choose different icons to share on Twitter (in public) than in their private emoji laden sexts. The heart probably gets a lot of play there, too. But, maybe the least popular one on Twitter, the curiously named "left luggage" (pictured at right) gets more play on phones?
RELATED: Your Nine-Number Guide to the Budget Battle
In addition to the rankings, Emojitracker also shows the actual tweets using the emojis in real time, which is a bit of a headache to look at for the popular ones.
RELATED: Venture Capitalists Ask: What Tech Bubble?
RELATED: The Five Leading Theories of What Happened in Weinergate
If the folks behind Emojitracker are taking feature requests, we'd love to see demographic breakdowns. Are Americans more likely to tweet the American flag emoji? Bible belters more likely to use the praying hands? A lot of questions remain. Which is fine — keyboards full of human emotions, animals, and ice cream are still relatively new to the U.S.
