That's why you see services with lots of pictographic functions eclipse pure test-based ones in Asia, because they are very used to that kind of symbolic communication. And why complex emoji using text characters in creative ways were developed in Asia in the first place.

For example, Twitter never really took off in southeast Asia, but Line is incredibly popular. Why? Stickers. Line offers endless little pictures you can use with your messages, while Twitter doesn't.

Now stickers (and emoji) are taking off a lot more in the West, because they are super compact and effective communication symbols. I think we'll see more and more of it.