Philadelphia Gets in the Smiley Spirit for World Emoji Day

What would our communication be like without emojis? Would we even know how to communicate anymore? These iconic pixel creations, which express everything from feelings to location to national pride, are in our texts, our Facebook and Instagram comments, and in our Messenger conversations. July 17th is considered to be World Emoji Day because the “calendar” emoji shows a default date of July 17th.

Celebrate your favorite icons today on World Emoji Day!

Philadelphia is getting in on the emoji action in honor of this special day. Visit Philadelphia, which is the city’s tourism marketing agency, rolled out a sticker pack of 33 Philly-themed emojis available in Apple’s app store. Now you can use the Philly!mojis in your Facebook Messenger convos on your iPhone or iPad with iOS 10. Sorry, Android users. The emojis include a cheesesteak (naturally!) and the Liberty Bell, along with other iconic Philly images.

“The popularity of messaging apps continues to grow and people love to use emojis, graphics and illustrations in these conversations,” said Meryl Levitz, president and CEO of Visit Philadelphia told CBS 3. “We think it’s important that visitors and locals have a free, visual way to liven up their conversations about Philly, which is why we’re bringing our fun Philly emojis to Apple stickers.”

If you feel like you’ve seen these Philly emojis before, you aren’t going crazy: they were repurposed from the old Philadelphia keyboard created by Visit Philadelphia, which is no longer supported.

While you are enjoying your Philly emojis, here are some other fun facts about them in honor of World Emoji Day. According to the Unicode Consortium, the group in charge of  creating new emojis, there are now 2,666 official emojis. This number jumped dramatically this year thanks to optional changes in skin tone, gender, and occupations. As recently as 2015 there were only 722 emojis. Across social media, the “face with tears of joy” emoji has reigned as the most commonly used icon. Right behind it are the heart-eye emoji, the kissing face, and the red heart.