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I think it's far more than "the size of the lookup table" because that implies that each emoji has one purpose (like the Facebook 5 have one purpose). Facebook

by criley2 11y ago

I think it's far more than "the size of the lookup table" because that implies that each emoji has one purpose (like the Facebook 5 have one purpose). Facebook's five choices are clear and universal human emotions that leave very little room for subjectivity. Emoji, on the other hand, are used as a famously arcane new language where each symbol has many potential uses, as a pictogram in conjunction with others, or as multiple uses per emoji, as viral "inside" jokes meaning completely different things than depicted (tree, fire, or pineapple are often used to mean a drug, but how do you know when a tree symbol means a drug and when it means a pine tree?) "X_X face" is often used to mean sexytimes, but the X_X emoji is also used to mean exasperation. Sad, happy, angry, these are simple to work with. But how do you classify Back-Button? What does a user think of a post when they rate it "Alien-Face". When they use "Skull/Crossbone" are they saying danger/poison, or death, or Halloween, costumes, a movie? I'm not sure you could ever get to an adequate level of programmatically understanding the intent behind emoji, but I think that it's not too difficult with 5 universal emotions.

acdha 11y ago
I'm not disagreeing that it's more work but that even with only a few options, this problem is dwarfed by the question of intention, which is what advertisers really want to know. “angry face” might seem universal at first glance but it's not easy to tell who the anger is directed at, which is what advertisers would want. Even the binary Like has this problem where you don't know if someone liked a story, like the way a reporter smacked down the subject of the story, or the comment your friend made when they shared news about someone you dislike. Besides, if Facebook only designed things for advertisers every post would have a mandatory form collecting demographic info. They know they have to make using the service enjoyable and this would be an easy way to boost interaction which doesn't make advertising fundamentally harder.

by criley2 11y ago

acdha 11y ago

I'm not disagreeing that it's more work but that even with only a few options, this problem is dwarfed by the question of intention, which is what advertisers really want to know. “angry face” might seem universal at first glance but it's not easy to tell who the anger is directed at, which is what advertisers would want. Even the binary Like has this problem where you don't know if someone liked a story, like the way a reporter smacked down the subject of the story, or the comment your friend made when they shared news about someone you dislike. Besides, if Facebook only designed things for advertisers every post would have a mandatory form collecting demographic info. They know they have to make using the service enjoyable and this would be an easy way to boost interaction which doesn't make advertising fundamentally harder.