Japan telecom giant NTT Docomo to end own emoji after 26 years

english.kyodonews.net

28 points·anigbrowl··8 comments

They really cared about that piece of intellectual property too. Anecdote time: Back in the early 00’s I was part of a small team developing a mobile phone for Docomo (using Openwave’s framework). Bug came back saying Docomo emojis are the wrong color. To which we replied, tell us the color codes and we’ll fix it. The reply was, we cannot - because Docomo emoji colors are secret. Those were good times! :)

:) How did it end?

The bug was set to WONTFIX and ignored. It was brought up in meetings on occasion (to some hilarity). Took a surprising amount of time for people to realize it wasn’t going to get resolved without a specification. There might have been some cultural differences at play, but mostly I think the Japanese company we dealt with had almost as little insight into Docomo as us half a world away.

The secret color chart eventually surfaced during compliance testing, the bug was resolved, and everyone lived happily ever after.

https://stories.moma.org/the-original-emoji-set-has-been-add...

List of original emojis

This sounds like an interesting piece of Japanese culture about which I knew nothing. Anyone have more background?

This is a good piece on the history of emoji and the role of NTT Docomo and Softbank

https://blog.emojipedia.org/correcting-the-record-on-the-fir...

You may find this, interesting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-pG79LOtMw&t=41

Japan is the reason we have internet, cameras, and emoji in our pocket.

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