In fact, ✨ Sparkles is one of the earliest emoji designs, originally supported by Japanese cellular carriers back in the late 1990s.Ībove: a Unicode proposal document featuring early examples of the ✨ Sparkles emoji from Japanese vendors SoftBank, Docomo, and au by KDDI.ĭocumentation from 2008 proposing the encoding of Japanese phone carrier emoji sets into Unicode includes the descriptive note 'sparkling new', referencing one of this emoji's early perceived meanings: to convey a sense of newness, cleanliness, and an associated sense of impressiveness.Īs with many of the earliest emojis, the design of ✨ Sparkles and this associated meaning was derived from conventions in Japanese manga (comics) and anime (animated cartoons). The design of ✨ Sparkles has historically been highly convergent across vendors: a cluster of three yellow-or-gold four-point stars, with one large sparkle and two small ones to its left or right. While there is still a considerable gap between 😂 Face with Tears of Joy and ✨ Sparkles, if the growing global dislike for 😂 continues, it's possible sparkles could become the second-most popular emoji on Twitter in 2022.Īlongside this growth on Twitter, ✨ Sparkles has seen considerable use across Tiktok videos and their associated comment sections. The previous peak for ✨ Sparkles came in October 2019, when it was in fourth place behind 😂 Face with Tears of Joy, 😭 Loudly Crying Face, and the now-6th-place ❤️ Red Heart. The trio of glistening stars just topped 🥺 Pleading Face to become the third most popular emoji on Twitter in September 2021, for the first time ever. While always popular, a recent surge in use across TikTok and other social platforms has seen the ✨ Sparkles emoji overtake 🤣 Rolling on the Floor Laughing, ❤️ Red Heart, and even 🥺 Pleading Face to become the third most popular emoji in the world.īased on data collected by Emojipedia, almost one in every 100 tweets now contains a ✨ Sparkles emoji. What's going on here? Did we just collectively decide this set of three stars has a distinct meaning? Or has this been the case all along? This emoji has been with us for over a decade, yet is now more popular than ever.Ībove: ✨ Sparkles emoji as it appears on major platforms.Įditor's Note: as of February 2022, both Microsoft and Samsung have updated their ✨ Sparkles emoji designs to be more consistent with those of other vendors. Once merely a decorative set of stars indicating newness or cleanliness, the sparkles emoji has become the go-to markup for ✨emphasis✨, ✨sarcasm✨ or ✨mocking✨ on TikTok and other platforms.

Emoji sparkle