There are so many interactions through websites, emails and social networks that emojis, or emoticons, are increasingly used. These signs sometimes help communication to be more direct or provide nuances. So much so, that in the Opera browser they are going to give them a big boost.
As announced, Opera has partnered with Yat, a company that sells URLs using emoji strings, with the aim of implementing these to page addresses, as a navigation mode. You will be able to access websites just by typing emojis.
The objective is “attract a new level of creativity to the internet” and you will be able to enter websites only with icons, you don’t have to add “www” or “.com”, for example.
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To understand it well there is nothing better than some practical examples. Now with the Opera browser you can visit Steve Aoki’s website with “??”, or Lil Wayne’s with “??”, they point out on Gizmodo. Questlove’s Questlove Supreme podcast iTunes playlist is accessible by entering with “???”.
Jorgen Arnesen, executive vice president of mobile devices at Opera, says that “It’s been almost 30 years since the world wide web was launched to the public, and there hasn’t been much innovation in the web linking space: people still include .com in their URLs“. The time has come to change this.
The director also states that “Through the integration with Yat, Opera users can get rid of .com or even words in their links and use emojis to be directed to websites. It’s new, it’s more easier and more fun”.
This will not remove the option to access websites with the usual URL. When Opera detects that someone has put emojis in the address bar, it will check the link against the Yat database to send the user to the corresponding page, if one exists.
We will see the course of this project and if more browsers are added, but it is not too groundbreaking given how emojis are currently used.