Baidu’s Facemoji Keyboard Releases Kaomoji Report

Report Reveals Most Popular Kaomoji of 2019 and Insights from 17 Countries

SAN FRANCISCO–(BUSINESS WIRE)–As 2019 comes to a close, Baidu, Inc. (Nasdaq: BIDU) today released a report revealing the most popular kaomoji used globally on its Facemoji Keyboard and Simeji apps throughout the year, as well as other findings and trends.

Kaomoji is a popular Japanese emoticon style first popularized in 1986 that consists of Japanese characters and punctuation, and is used to express emotion in digital communication. The term kaomoji is derived from the combination of two words: “kao” meaning “face”, and “moji” meaning “character.”

Baidu’s 2019 Kaomoji Report found the following:

• The shrug is the most popular kaomoji globally, ranking No. 1 in 11 countries.
• Over 100,000 kaomoji are sent every single day in the US.
• India was the only country whose most popular kaomoji was apologetic, while France was the only country with two negative kaomoji in their top three.
• Japan and Russia like to keep their kaomoji simple.
• India and the UK like having words in their kaomoji, while Japan continues to take a minimalist approach, using the kanji for “smile” to simply mean “lol.”

On social media:

• Instagram was the only social media site to feature a crying kaomoji in its top three.
• The kissing kaomoji is popular on Facebook, Snapchat and WhatsApp, while Twitter prefers hugs.
• Two of the top three kaomoji used on WhatsApp depict love.

“Kaomoji are an important part of digital culture in Asia, and we are thrilled to see them growing in popularity around the globe,” said Mr. Jiang Feng, director of Baidu’s Global Business Unit. “As 2019 winds down, we want to take a moment to recognize the kaomoji trends of the year and celebrate their significance.”

The report references fully anonymized data from 17 countries, including the United States, Argentina, Brazil, Egypt, France, India, Indonesia, Iraq, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Spain, Thailand, Turkey, the United Kingdom and Vietnam. The report data includes the most popular kaomoji used on Facemoji Keyboard and Simeji in 2019 by country and by app, including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat and WhatsApp.

To read the full 2019 Kaomoji Report, click here.

About Facemoji Keyboard

Facemoji Keyboard is an emoji-centric keyboard app featuring Baidu’s speech recognition technology. It includes an emoji prediction feature and a wide variety of stickers, GIFs and customizable keyboards. Facemoji Keyboard’s goal is to help people around the world express themselves in new ways with fun, creative emoji.

About Simeji

Simeji is the No. 1 keyboard app in Japan on both iOS and Android, with over 38 million downloads. With Simeji, people can express themselves like never before with kaomoji, animated stickers, customized keyboard skins and more.

About Baidu

Baidu, Inc. is the leading Chinese language Internet search provider. Baidu aims to make the complicated world simpler through technology. Baidu’s ADSs trade on the NASDAQ Global Select Market under the symbol “BIDU.” Currently, ten ADSs represent one Class A ordinary share.

Contacts

The Hoffman Agency

Shannon Nelson

408-286-2611

snelson@hoffman.com