Founder of Emojipedia
Jeremy Burge
Born (1984-07-14 ) 14 July 1984 (age 39) Australia
Occupation Founder of
Emojipedia Known for Entrepreneur, blogger
Jeremy Burge (born 14 July 1984)
[1] is an Australian
emoji historian, founder of
Emojipedia , creator of
World Emoji Day and widely regarded as an expert on emoji.
[2]
[3]
[4]
[5]
Business Insider listed Burge in the UK Tech 100 in 2016,
[6] 2017
[7] and 2018
[8] referring to him as "The Emoji Maestro"
[9] while other publications have used terms such as "Emoji King"
[10]
[11] or "Lord of Emojis".
[12]
[13]
The New Yorker dubbed Burge "The
Samuel Johnson of Emoji" in 2020.
[14]
Emojipedia
In July 2013, Burge started the emoji reference site
Emojipedia , after wondering how long the doughnut emoji had been in existence, and not being able to find an answer on
Google or
Wikipedia .
[14]
The Sydney Morning Herald reported the site had 23 million page views per month in 2017.
[15]
Burge was Chief Emoji Officer at Emojipedia
[16] between 2016 and 2022,
[17]
[18]
[19] overseeing all editorial content on the site.
[20]
During his time at Emojipedia, Burge worked with professional
sportspeople
Tony Hawk and
Sasha DiGiulian to improve the accuracy of Emojipedia's sample images for the skateboard
[21]
[22]
[23] and rock climber
[24] respectively. Jenken Magazine reported: "While they were on the phone one day, Hawk sent Burge a picture of his own board"
[25] which was used as the basis of Emojipedia's revised skateboard design.
[26]
In 2021, Emojipedia served over 500 million annual page views. Emojipedia was acquired by
Zedge in August 2021 for an undisclosed amount.
[27]
Unicode
Currently representing Emojipedia on the
Unicode Technical Committee ,
[28] Burge previously held a position as vice-chair of the
Unicode Emoji Subcommittee from 2017 to 2019.
[29]
Described as a leading authority on emoji use,
[30] Burge urged Apple to rethink its plan to convert the handgun emoji symbol into a water pistol icon in 2016, citing cross-platform confusion.
[31] Emoji flags for England, Scotland and Wales were added to the Unicode Standard in 2017 after a formal proposal
[32] co-authored by Burge was approved.
[33] Rather than individual code points, they are represented by
tag sequences .
Speaking to Crikey in 2022, Burge spoke against superfluous emoji additions: “representation is important but I’m not sure we need another abacus or lab coat emoji”.
[34]
Writing
Burge has been a regular news contributor to Emojipedia
[35] and responsible for many of the initial emoji definitions on the reference website.
[36] Additionally he has written for publications such Six Colors,
[37]
Medium ,
[38]
[39] and The Internet Review.
[40] InAugust 2023,
Radio New Zealand reported that Burge was writing for Mobile Tech Journal.
[41]
In 2019, Burge raised the issue of Facebook using user-submitted phone numbers for undocumented purposes,
[42]
[43] and in 2020, he identified TikTok accessing user clipboard data on every keystroke.
[44]
Podcasting
Burge hosted
Emoji Wrap , a podcast
[45] from Emojipedia
[46] covering "global emoji news and trends"
[47] between August 2016 and December 2020
[48] interviewing guests including
Mark Davis ,
[49]
Myke Hurley ,
[50]
Jason Snell
[51] and
Christina Warren .
[52]
The Guardian notes that Google product manager Agustin Fonts was "hesitant about shifting to a water pistol" when discussing the Android gun emoji with Burge on the Emoji Wrap podcast.
[53]
Between 2017 and 2023, Burge appeared frequently on podcasts from
Relay FM
[54] and
The Incomparable .
[55]
Public speaking
The
Evening Standard reported that Burge "lectured on the history and social impact of emojis" at TEDxEastEnd at London's
Hackney Empire in 2017.
[56] In addition, Burge has spoken at conferences such as The Next Web in Amsterdam,
[57] Smart Future in Riga,
[58] Design Matters in Copenhagen
[59] and Úll in Killarney.
[60]
Institutions that have hosted Burge include
Eton College ,
[61]
Eye Magazine ,
[62]
Google ,
[63]
London Design Museum ,
[64]
The British Library ,
[65] and
University College London .
[66]
[67]
World Emoji Day
World Emoji Day is a "global celebration of emoji" created by Burge in 2014.
[14]
[68]
[69] According to the
New York Times , he created the day on "July 17 based on the way the calendar emoji is shown on iPhones".
[70]
[71] Burge told
Axios in 2017 that "
Tim Cook tweeted about [World Emoji Day] this year so I was kind of excited about that".
[72]
In 2017 Burge discussed the origin of World Emoji Day and
Emojipedia
[73] at
AOL BUILD,
[74] attended the lighting of the Empire State Building "emoji yellow"
[75] with
The Emoji Movie voice cast
Patrick Stewart ,
Maya Rudolph and
Jake T. Austin , and announced the winners of the annual World Emoji Awards from the
New York Stock Exchange .
[14]
[76]
Saks Fifth Avenue hosted a "Saks Celebrates World Emoji Day" red carpet event in 2017
[77] which was attended by Burge.
[78] On
World Emoji Day 2019, Burge attended the launch of an exhibition at the
National Museum of Cinema
[79]
[80] and spoke alongside Unicode Consortium co-founder
Mark Davis at
The British Library .
[81]
[82]
Burge claimed to “relax and enjoy it [World Emoji Day] at least once” in 2022, after stepping down from Emojipedia.
[83]
Personal life
Burge was born in
Western Australia ,
[84] and educated at
Assumption College, Kilmore
[85] before graduating from
Deakin University .
[86] In the spring of 2019
[87]
[88] Burge moved onto a 53 ft narrowboat named Dottie M
[89] and gained popularity on
TikTok with viral clips navigating rivers and
canals of the United Kingdom .
[90]
[91]
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External links