Imojiapp, a free new app launched this week finally gets rid of the barrier between the real you and your online emotions. “Forget emojis,” writes one reviewer at iTunes, “imojis are the new way to send graphics via iMessage!” Imojiapp allows users to incorporate their own faces–or any graphic image–into the traditional emoji. To back up for newbies–an emoji is a sort of personalized emoticon that originated in Japan and has spread like wildfire around the world. The word comes from a combination of “picture” (e) and “character” (moji), according to Wikipedia.
It only makes sense to exchange the i for the e, creating imoji. After all, a product that begins with a small “i” has an advantage in the marketplace! And the personalization fits the trend of all digital communications. One review on iTunes asks a question the imojoi founders—Dan Brusilovsky, Kirk Lacob, Jason Stein, Ben Draa, Nima Khoshini, and Tom Smith–must love to hear: “Why isn’t this built into the iPhone?” Maybe it will be. Tom Smith told Forbes that early imoji adopters proved that “giving people the tools to express themselves leads to some amazing creation.”
