Emojis are the new Likes on Viber !

Emoji are particularly popular with instant messaging users and chatters. With a playful symbol, they can express feelings of joy, sadness or excitement without spending ages typing.

To mark the occasion, Rakuten Viber, celebrating World Emoji Day (yes, it really exists!), conducted a survey in various countries, asking users which was their favourite emoji among heart, laughter, shock, sadness and anger (????, ????, ????, ????, ????). Notably, in Greece, more than 15.000 users voted, choosing the heart as their favourite emoji with 58% of the vote.

Once the vote had closed, the company had a surprise in store for users, as they will soon be able to react to a message not just with a like, but with their favourite emoji! To do this, they simply need to press and hold the heart icon next to each message and select the emoji they want to use, much like choosing reactions on Facebook. As Viber's COO explained, a like does not express the wide range of emotions a user may feel during a conversation. So the company needed to offer more options. “The emoji reactions feature allows users to express themselves in the most appropriate way”.