WhatsApp emojis…are they causing problems?
A news article in The Guardian recently published a piece about the beta version of WhatsApp for Android users, with a sole focus on their new emojis.
The mode is a written article with limited visuals and could benefit from having side-by-side visual comparisons of the apps and systems’ emojis. Especially as the journalist simply describes the small differences in a written manner.
The characters in this piece focus on social media giants such as Facebook and Twitter as well as manufacturers including Apple and Android. However, a lack of named individuals, as well as comments from the named companies, gives the impression that this story simply doesn’t matter.
There is a difficultly when it comes to setting a technological article. The most likely setting are the apps and consumer’s phones, however it is an issue as to how a journalist creates a setting that is purely based on software. Therefore giving a more visual demonstration would benefit the article.
The conflict within this article is the potential infringement of copyright by Facebook. However, it also leaves a number of questions unanswered. Why do social media platforms want to move away from 3rd party designs? Why is the copying of emojis a problem/benefit for iOS Apple? And lastly, why does this matter? By the end of the article, I felt like saying: so what? If the article had waited for a more public conflict over this issue, for example legal action, then these emojis would have provided an origin to a more interesting and important problem.
It is clearly written for techy readers, such as myself, however the cross-platform communication issues the journalist mentions aren’t really an issue.
A much more interesting angle that the piece touched on would be how users don’t want to see change or how Apple has a monopoly over a certain creative element of mobile technology, leaving users little choice.
