Months before Facebook launched their emoji reaction option, Fargo locals Anthony Nelson and Alex Dixon were toying with the idea for WordPress. Heart-eyed smiley faces or poo shaped emojis allow for so much more diversity than a simple ‘like’ or comment, they thought.
Now, in the wake of Facebook rolling out ‘love, haha, wow, sad and angry’ emoji reactions, the two inventors are launching their own plug-in that allows any website to have emoji-response ability.
“We think [Facebook’s] timing is really good because people can get used to saying ‘Oh I love this article’ and hitting this type of emoji,” Nelson said.
“It’s a lot easier to click on an emoji than to think of a comment,” Dixon said.
Nelson, who takes the visionary role, and Dixon, a developer, put together the product in a matter of weeks. They call it Mojirater. They launched it on Product Hunt, a curated platform for showcasing new products in the tech world, yesterday morning.
Mojirater can be installed on any WordPress site using a plug-in, or by copying and pasting a few lines of code. Users with the free option can select from three template options of emojis, shown below:
These emoji options will appear below the content published on your site, allowing readers to respond with the emoji of their choice.
Users can also choose to upgrade to a Pro Mojirater account for $4 a month/ $29 a year. This allows you to customize your emoji board and the ability to use any emoji you like. Nelson used the example of a a food blogger, who could use emojis like a fork and plate, or a disgusted face, to get feedback from their readers.
On the back-end, the website managers receive data on how people are reacting to their content.
“You get data of all the URLs that people have reacted to. You can see what your most loved article is, or what people have disliked,” Nelson said. “We want content producers to get more feedback than just likes and page views. We’re trying to bring some emotions into it.”
Mojirater joins a host of other similar emoji products on Product Hunt, including an emoji reaction pack for Slack, Pokemon themed reactions for Facebook, and something called Trump Reacts (the name should speak for itself.)
“There’s an emoji related product on Product Hunt almost every single day,” Nelson said.
However, most of these are specific to a certain platform, he said. Nelson and Dixon are hopeful that by creating an agnostic emoji plug-in they can reach a broader audience.
“We wanted to do it before anybody else did it,” Nelson said.
Here’s their actual faces. Nelson (left) and Dixon (right)
Check out some other work in the Nelson & Dixon portfolio.
Photo courtesy of Emerging Prairie.
