Recently I've noticed many strange characters appearing on Twitter. Based on one person's joke tweet I read I think they may be emoji or something similar.
How can I get these displaying properly in my browser or on my mobile?
Twitter – What are these funny characters on Twitter
emojispecial characterstwitter
Related Solutions
The new service iftt.com allows me to do what I planned. It is very easy.
I connected iftt.com with my gmail account and my wordpress account. When a mail comes in from the mailing list, it is automatically labeled by filters in gmail. iftt then checks for e-mails with this label and posts these mails in my wordpress blog. The wordpress blog is than connected with my twitter account and tweets the new posts. Voila!
Sidenote: You don't have to use gmail. Iftt also accepts forwarded mails from all other providers. Also one can also forward these mails to Tumblr and Posterous, who also support auto tweeting.
cheers
It does work, they have just changed the way it is implemented. It now tries to leave URLs as you posted them so that users can easily see where the link is going rather than all links being http://t.co/xxxxx
See this help article on Twitters Link Shortening service.
Having trouble fitting a link into just 140 characters?
- With Twitter’s new link-shortening feature, you can now paste a link of any length into the Tweet box on Twitter.com and it will be shortened to 19 characters. You no longer have to worry about fitting a long link into the 140 character limit!
- If you want to keep using your favorite link shortening service, you can continue to do so.
- Note: If you enter a URL shorter than 19 characters into the Tweet box, our system will still "shorten" it to 19 characters. (example: https://about.me/ will take up 19 characters in your Tweet even though its URL is only 16 characters long.)
This is what posting a long URL used to look like:
This is what posting a long URL looks like now:
Fig.1 After 13 characters of a URL are entered, a message appears to let you know that the link will be shortened.
Fig. 2 YouTube URL has been assigned a t.co link ID, but the link will appear as a shortened version of the original URL.
Whenever you post a link in one of your Tweets, it will automatically be shortened. See for yourself!
- Start typing or paste a long URL into the Tweet box.
- After you’ve entered the first 13 characters of a URL, a message will appear at the bottom of the Tweet box, letting you know that the link will appear shortened. (Fig. 1)
- Notice that even if you’ve reached the character limit, you can continue to add text to the URL with no consequence.
- Once the Tweet is posted, it will be assigned a t.co link ID, but the link will appear as a shortened version of the original URL, so people who see your Tweet will know the site they are going to when they click the link (Fig. 2, above). Yep! It’s now that easy.
Note: Twitter's link service (http://t.co) is only used on links posted on Twitter and is not available as a general shortening service. To learn more, see our help page on Twitter's Link Service here.
Safe URLS
- Sometimes URLs can be harmful, so please be careful when clicking on links that were shortened using an external link shortening service.
- Always check to see what website you're on before giving out your password or downloading any software.
- URLs converted by Twitter’s link service are checked against a list of potentially dangerous sites, and when there’s a match, users will be warned before they continue.
- Our Safe Tweeting help page has more information on keeping your account secure.
Related Topic
- Twitter – How to tag Twitter friends in Instagram
- Twitter – How to Stop Bing Translations
- Twitter – Is It Possible to Change a Tweet’s Timestamp After Tweeting
- Twitter – How to Manage and Block Multiple Mentions at Once
- Twitter – How to remove the phone number from someone else’s Twitter account
- Twitter – How to Insert Intersection Character in Bio
- What emoji characters are supported in Jira’s Quick Filters
Best Answer
They are different characters (or partly non-character codepoints) that your browser cannot display due to lack of support in fonts in your system. It is common strategy in browsers to display a small rectangle containing the Unicode number in hexadecimal digits. You can use e.g. Fileformat.info Unicode Character Search or the Babelpad editor to find information on a character by its Unicode number. Installing additional fonts in your system may make some of the characters visible in your browser.
For example, in the part you have circled, the first box seems to contain E04A. It refers to a Private Use Codepoint, which means that no character is assigned to it in the Unicode Standard and this is guaranteed to remain so, and between interested parties any private agreement can be made about it. So it’s kinda pointless to use it on a web page, unless you are using a downloadable font that contains some glyph in its position.
The first of the problem boxes seems to contain 01F602, which means U+1F602 FACE WITH TEARS OF JOY, which is an emoticon, of the emoji kind. Emojis were included into Unicode primarily due to their use in Japanese text messaging, but they seem to have gained some geekish reputation and other uses. There are very few fonts that contain this character so far. According to Fileformat.info page on its font coverage, it exists only in DejaVu Sans fonts and in Symbola. In fact you need a fairly new version of DejaVu Sans (the one that I have does not have it). On the other hand, a sufficiently new version of Segoe UI Symbol has it, too, and so does Quivira.