https://thenextweb.com/tnw-answers/2020/06/16/4-eye-opening-facts-about-emoji-explained-by-an-emoji-historian/

TNW Answers is a live Q&A platform where we invite interesting people in tech who are much smarter than us to answer questions from TNW readers and editors for an hour. 

Emoji blew up in 2012 and was fully embraced when Apple released iOS6 with its extended emoji keyboard. Since then, emoji have come a long way, and thanks to their skyrocketing popularity they are on every major social media platform out there.