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Rio and the emoji keyboard: How athletes and social media are competing

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Analytics firm SocialBakers reported a huge increase from 2014-2015 in the amount of emojis used in social media posts by major brands. This set the groundwork for Domino’s and 20th Century Fox’s Deadpool’s dedicated emoji marketing campaigns in the latter part of last year. And with brands such as Ikea, Burger King, Coca Cola and Mentos having all released their own emoticon keyboards, Digiday’s recent reveal of a new breed of Olympic-themed emoji keyboards didn't come as that much of a surprise. Athletes and social media brands are competing to stay relevant and maximise their presence when the Rio Olympic Games kick off on Saturday.

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IKEA's emoji keyboard includes meatballs

Last month, Puma released its free Boltmoji app. The 41 emojis it hosts include Usain Bolt crying with laughter, his World Record time, his infamous 'To Di World’ pose (of course) and a host of Puma products, all marketed as the "World’s Fastest Emojis".

Since its release, other athletes have sought to gain from the emoticon action. U.S. gymnasts Gabby Douglas and Simone Biles released their GabbyMoji and Simoji, with a cost of $1.99 and $0.79 respectively. And on Thursday, champion swimmer Micheal Phelps released PhelpsMoji, it costs $0.99.

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NBC Universal has also rolled out a Rio 2016 Keyboard including general emojis and gifs that promise to help users "express excitement and national pride" as the games progress. The first version of the app reportedly violated user’s privacy, but NBC Universal now say the issue has been resolved.

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As phone memory’s become clogged up with Pokémon, and with costs that may exclude some users, it will be interesting to see how the downloads of the athlete's emoji keyboards fare after the opening weekend buzz around the games dies down. They also face stiff competition from Twitter who are hosting their own Olympic themed emojis for free.

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On Twitter, users can activate specific hashtags to enter into the Olympic conversation, and fans around the world can show their national support with 207 team flag emojis which appear when a three-letter country code hashtag is triggered. #GBR for Great Britain or #THA for Thailand for example. Similarly, #Olympics comes with a gold wreath, #OpeningCeremony with fireworks and #Gold, #Silver and #Bronze get mini medallions. Twitter has also created mini icons for each sport, from #Beachvolleyball to #WrestlingGrecoRoman.

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WhatsApp has also released an Olympic Ring emoji, albeit somewhat hidden. Andriod users will find it after the bowling ball on their WhatsApp keyboards. iPhone users probably won’t ever find it as they’ll need to follow this set of slightly confusing instructions.

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Kim Kardashian’s Kimoji may have topped download charts when it was first released, but the Kardashian reach is gargantuan and it’ll be interesting to see how the Rio athlete's apps fare in comparison. For now though, they’ve probably got other things on their minds...

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