Companies Want To Insert Ads Into Unicode (thenextweb.com)

AmiMoJo writes: Food company Nestle has started a petition to get a KitKat emoji into the Unicode standard. They aren't alone, Taco Bell wants a taco emoji added, and Durex suggested adding a condom. While the latter two are at least generic, KitKat is a trademark of Nestle and the "break" image a key part of their marketing. Next year Unicode will include a faceplam emoji (U+1F926) for occasions such as this.

Comments

Sure

[Anonymous Coward]

Just assign the images, trademarks and logos over to the public domain and we are done.

So?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't see a problem with having yet another useless character that few people will ever use. However, the use of a grassroots petitioning service like change.org to advance a corporate agenda is much more troubling and a very cynical move by (well-known evildoers) Nestle.

slowpoke.jpg?

[Lunix Nutcase]

There already is a taco emoji. It's in Unicode 8.0.

Time to fork unicode

[Anonymous Coward]

This is pure rubbish. We dont need more crap gunking things up. Make advertising illegal.

Why emojis/emoticons are in Unicode?

[Parker Lewis]

Can someone explain me why emojis are in Unicode at all?

Re:Why emojis/emoticons are in Unicode?

[undecim11]

Japan

Re:Why emojis/emoticons are in Unicode?

[OzPeter]

Can someone explain me why emojis are in Unicode at all?

What emojis? People keep sending me texts that my RAZR flip phone* renders as solid white boxes.

Now get off my lawn

* I actually do use an original RAZR flip phone that is going on 7 years old now. It makes phone calls.

Re:Why emojis/emoticons are in Unicode?

[TWX]

Because the newest generation likes to express themselves differently than the dinosaurs...

Believe me the demand is there, just because you can't comprehend it doesn't mean it shouldn't exist.

I'm sure that lots of people disagree with me, but historically the most creative writing emerged when base words and concepts were generally not acceptable in speech. Sure, it's censorship, but on the other hand, you don't find Shakespeare to simply be dialogue loaded-down with vulgar words either, and when vulgarities are employed, sparingly, they are highly effective.

Emojis are a form of base communications, when one does not take the time to express one's self properly. That doesn't mean that there isn't a place for them, but it isn't unfair to judge people by their choice to use them instead of the express themselves otherwise.

Re:Why emojis/emoticons are in Unicode?

[ljw1004]

Can someone explain me why emojis are in Unicode at all?

So that people can exchange written communication in a standard way, interoperable among vendors and software systems.

Re:Why emojis/emoticons are in Unicode?

[TWX]

Good design in the past meant that a designer used elements from a common pool. Icons, list bullets, etc that were images were not re-sourced every single time they were displayed across multiple pages, they were sourced the first time the page loaded and then cached and reused.

Web designers need to go back to the low-bandwidth model. They need to be forced to using ISDN (128kb) speeds to make the framework of their pages efficient before they start filling-in the meat of the pages with content. If the framework without content takes significant time to load, even without a character-set full of garbage to pull from, then the designer needs to rethink the design.

This

[Anonymous Coward]

This is why I hate Emojis.

Seriously, they were a bad idea to begin with. Then the politically correct nazis started getting upset about them. And now this.

None of this should be in Unicode. If you want stupid little graphics in your text, then use stupid little graphics.

Re:This

[Anonymous Coward]

You must be kidding. ASCII isn't even sufficient to write English, let alone the many other languages which genuinely benefit from being typeable.

U+1F36B Chocolate Bar

[tepples]

That's why U+1F36B is a generic chocolate bar rather than a HERSHEY'S® bar.

Re:U+1F36B Chocolate Bar

[mwvdlee]

I spoke too soon.
The proposed misappropriation of the word "break" is plain and pure evil.

If "apple" were to be included in UTF-8, it should be a generic apple-shaped fruit symbol, not the computer brand trademark.

Similarly, any "break" symbol, if adopted in UTF-8 in the proposed context of "a small time-out in between work", should be a generic symbol indicating such, not one indicating a specific brands' marketing campaign.

Douglas Adams' described marketeers best: "A bunch of mindless jerks who'll be the first against the wall when the revolution comes".

Re:U+1F36B Chocolate Bar

[AmiMoJo]

We should allow it as long as the Unicode Consortium makes a royalty-free penis emoji an acceptable alternate rendering. That way when you send someone one, you never know if you are sending them a KitKat or a dick pic.

Re:U+1F926

[MachineShedFred]

I prefer U+1F595

LIGHTSPEED BRIEFS

[Thud457]

Leela: Didn't you have ads in the 21st century?"
Fry: Well sure, but not in our dreams. Only on TV and radio, and in magazines, and movies, and at ball games... and on buses and milk cartons and t-shirts, and bananas and written on the sky. But not in dreams, no siree.