Most popular emoji (current)

According to a collaborative study between the University of Michigan (USA) and the University of Peking (China), published in the International Journal of UbiComp in September 2016, the most used emoji is "Face with Tears of Joy" (aka "LOL Emoji" or "Laughing Emoji"). Of the 427 million messages taken from 212 countries/regions examined, this symbol comprised 15.4% of all emoji used worldwide. In second and third places were "Love Heart" and "Smiling Face with Heart-shaped Eyes" (aka "Heart Eyes"), respectively. The results were based on use of the Kika Emoji Keyboard app.

"Face with Tears of Joy" was ranked as the UK's most popular emoji in 2016 by mobile tech company SwiftKey.

"Face with Tears of Joy" was also the most used emoji according to the EmojiTracker website, an online counter which aims to record all emoji shared on Twitter in real-time; as of 12 January 2017, "Face with Tears of Joy" had logged 1,557,686,411 uses – more than double that of its closest contender, the "Love Heart".

"Face with Tears of Joy" was the third most-used emoji on photo-based social network Instagram in 2016; it was beaten by "Smiling Face with Heart-shaped Eyes" (no.2) and "Love Heart" (no.1).

"Face with Tears of Joy" was recognized as Oxford University's Word of the Year in 2015 – the first time a pictorial symbol had ever achieved this.

"Face with Tears of Joy" first appeared with Unicode 6.0 in 2010.