Unicode Consortium announces beta version of 2018 emoji, introducing ability to flip direction of emoji, removal of proposed “Frowning Pile Of Poo” emoji, more
Context & Ripple Effects
This beta announcement is the first public draft of what became the 2018 emoji set released on June 5 — the Consortium's move to a yearly cycle where proposals are floated, cut, and refined in the open. Dropping the 'Frowning Pile Of Poo' at the beta stage shows that process working: candidates die before they reach platforms.
Emojipedia, run by Jeremy Burge, functions as the de facto scoreboard for this cycle, and its coverage tracks the cadence through the 230 emojis finalized for 2019 and beyond.
First-order effects
- Platform vendors implementing the 2018 set now have to support directional flipping — a rendering and asset-pipeline change, not just new artwork — while the Frowning Pile Of Poo is off their roadmaps entirely.
Second-order effects
- A published beta turns every year's emoji list into a public review window, giving Emojipedia and platform designers time to push back on candidates before finalization locks them in.
Third-order effects
- The annual beta-then-finalize rhythm becomes the industry norm for emoji — though the Consortium's later delay of the 2021 batch showed how fragile that fixed calendar is when external disruption hits.
The trend: Emoji standardization has settled into an annual beta-to-release pipeline run by the Unicode Consortium, with each year's candidate list publicly triaged before platforms ship it.