How Japanese Imoji for Designing iMessage Emoji enables Creative Community and Celebrities to Monetize Stickers

“Obviously, there’s a massive trend that goes on with emoji and stickers…and what it’s really all about is people finding new ways to communicate. People use emoji to describe tone – and fundamentally, it’s an easier way to express yourself than punching out of couple of sentences.”

Imoji Founder Tom Smith speaking about the future of his company that allows users to create their own custom Emoji Stickers

Apple iPhone users, I something special for you!

Emoticons are still a popular mode of communications and I was super-happy when they came to Facebook back in 2012 as stated in my Geezam blog article entitled “How to add Emoticons to your Facebook posts”. But they're limited to a smiley Face with various combinations of punctuations creating different emoticons.

Enter the Emoji, the new #Trending hieroglyphics of modern Communication over that medium called IM (Instant Messaging).

Designer Tom Smith, formerly of Apple, has tapped into that trend with his IM App Extension called Emoji that helps Apple iPhone users who have a thing for iMessage to create their own custom hieroglyphs as explained in Imoji For iPhone Lets You Turn Any Image Into A Custom Emoji, published July 24 2014 by Sarah Perez, Techcrunch and “Bye-Bye, Words: An Emoji-Only Social App Is Coming”, published  6/30/2014 @ 8:02PM by Parmy Olson, Forbes.

Founder of Offline, an App based magazine that's reminiscent of our Local Loop App here in Jamaica as described in my blog article entitled “Loop is Big News on Apple iTunes and the Google Play Store – Social Media Entity makes big splash in Social Media Scene”, Tom Smith started Emoji as a way for IM users to create more photo-realistic custom emoji instead of relying on the preset stock that came with most IM Applications.

Imoji for iMessage Emoji – Creative Community just got their Sticker producing outlet

For the Desktop or Laptop bound, Imoji, which is available exclusively on the Apple iTunes Store, is a lot like PhotoScape, that freeware Image Viewer program that allows you to manipulate images that you find online and create animated GIF, Collages and even combine photos into a single filmstrip.

However, you creative genius will be confined to your Apple iPhone and restricted to images you can pilfer from the web or photographs from your Apple iPhone Camera or Photo Gallery. The tools are much simpler than PhotoScape; Zoom, Crop and then Cutting your image via a virtual pair of scissors controlled via a touch interface makes it feel like more like Microsoft Paint for your Apple iPhone.

But the quaintness aside, your creation, which is basically a sticker, can go private or public with other users of the Imoji App, with immediate usage within iMessage. Best of all, Imoji is social; if you're not into being creative, there are others who might be more creative and may be offering their emoji publicly, allowing you to synch them for usage in your iMessage Texts.

If you’re into the popularity love-game, a Twitter-esque listing of the most popular Emojis designed by other Imoji App users. Armed with that list, you'll always put your best hieroglyphics forwards and communicate in personalized style, albeit these are more like Stickers than emoji.

Stickers are already hugely popular in Japan and Taiwan and many Americans and Wanna-be Americans in Jamaica may already be aware that Japanese users of the Line App will spend serious money to purchase Stickers as explained in my blog article entitled “Japanese Line introduces Line Call for Landline and Mobile - US$0.02 per Call and Kawaii Stickers a plus as WhatsApp and Skype get company in making International Calling and Roaming Extinct”.

Imoji Sticker trend Rising – Taiwan and Japanese Trend may become money-maker for Celebrities

Imoji founder Tom Smith is very much aware of this coming future trend. Already his app has that Social-like feature of using Emoji share publicly by other Designers. Thus he's got plans in the pipeline to expand on that Twitter-like approach and allow persons to follow the truly creative on Imoji.

Possible monetization models may also exist, with options for some Emoji Designers to sell their stickers and make revenue from sales split between the Imoji and themselves.

Even corporate-sponsored Advertising Stickers may be coming, with companies and Celebrities being able to make premium stickers to be sold at a higher price. iMessage advertising is possible as well.

But I’ll be more interested in how long emojis as a trend will stick around as Imoji founder Tom Smith begins to look into the Eye of the Tiger. In the meantime, scope out his app on the Apple iTunes Store:

Imoji on Apple iTunes Store