Report Reveals Most Popular Kaomoji of 2019 and Insights from 17 Countries

As 2019 comes to a close, Baidu, Inc. released a report revealing the most popular kaomoji used globally on its Facemoji Keyboard and Simeji apps throughout the year, as well as other findings and trends.

“As 2019 winds down, we want to take a moment to recognize the kaomoji trends of the year and celebrate their significance.”

Kaomoji is a popular Japanese emoticon style first popularized in 1986 that consists of Japanese characters and punctuation, and is used to express emotion in digital communication. The term kaomoji is derived from the combination of two words: “kao” meaning “face”, and “moji” meaning “character.”

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Baidu’s 2019 Kaomoji Report found the following:

• The shrug is the most popular kaomoji globally, ranking No. 1 in 11 countries.
• Over 100,000 kaomoji are sent every single day in the US.
• India was the only country whose most popular kaomoji was apologetic, while France was the only country with two negative kaomoji in their top three.
• Japan and Russia like to keep their kaomoji simple.
• India and the UK like having words in their kaomoji, while Japan continues to take a minimalist approach, using the kanji for “smile” to simply mean “lol.”

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On social media:

• Instagram was the only social media site to feature a crying kaomoji in its top three.
• The kissing kaomoji is popular on Facebook, Snapchat and WhatsApp, while Twitter prefers hugs.
• Two of the top three kaomoji used on WhatsApp depict love.

“Kaomoji are an important part of digital culture in Asia, and we are thrilled to see them growing in popularity around the globe,” said Mr. Jiang Feng, director of Baidu’s Global Business Unit. “As 2019 winds down, we want to take a moment to recognize the kaomoji trends of the year and celebrate their significance.”

The report references fully anonymized data from 17 countries, including the United States, Argentina, Brazil, Egypt, France, India, Indonesia, Iraq, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Spain, Thailand, Turkey, the United Kingdom and Vietnam. The report data includes the most popular kaomoji used on Facemoji Keyboard and Simeji in 2019 by country and by app, including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat and WhatsApp.

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