Emoji is the fastest growing language in the world, and thanks to Emoji2Video – a website from researchers at the University of Amsterdam – you can now use those characters to search for videos. With plans to bring the tech to YouTube, will emojis soon dominate video search like they do our texts?

Internet memes were once relegated to the depths of 4chan and Reddit. As memetic content surfaces in the mainstream, brands are looking to incorporate memes into their own ads. But can the spontaneous, bottom-up spirit that makes them so potent really be bottled and sold?

Attitudes to PINs and passwords are pretty lax; 25% of people use the same code for every card. Intelligent Environments is hoping to reinvent passwords, replacing numbers with a combination of four emojis. Can the fastest growing language come to dominate our PIN codes as they do our texts?

With just 7% of communication being attributed to spoken words, and the remainder down to body language and tone of voice, it’s easy to see why communicating online has been described as cold and impersonal. Emoticons, emoji and stickers are helping make digital communication a bit more human.