Dive Brief:
- GoDaddy, a company most known for web registration and hosting, has rolled out a search engine for domain names according to reporting by Fortune.
- Emoji-based domains are made possible because the top level domain for Samoa — .ws — supports emoji on the coding level.
- It’s likely that brands will take advantage of this new territory to claim domains around campaigns based on emojis.
Dive Insight:
Emojis are becoming an integral part of how information is shared and organized on the Internet, in part because of how communicating via messaging on a mobile phone is influencing a new kind of shorthand.
Marketers have quickly embraced the emoji trend as way to engage younger consumers on mobile. The GoDaddy news suggests the emoji trend potentially has staying power and a broader reach.
This summer Appboy released a study that found emoji use in marketing up 609% year-over-year. The survey also found that 63% of respondents had a positive view of emoji marketing, 87% reported using emojis in their personal messages and 68% said they received one or more emojis each day.
Coca-Cola and Norwegian Airlines have run ads featuring emoji web domains.
Fortune reported that according to GoDaddy, the first emoji domain was registered in 1995.
