Emojipedia launched as an online emoji reference in 2013.
The site appeared during a period when emoji were spreading rapidly beyond Japan into global smartphone messaging, social networks, and web services. Users could see the same Unicode character rendered differently on different devices, creating a need for a guide that documented names, meanings, and artwork.
Emojipedia helped fill that gap by recording platform-specific designs and explaining the official terminology used in Unicode data. Its pages also became useful when new emoji were announced, because readers could compare proposed or recently released symbols with older characters.
The launch date is sometimes confused with the dates of Unicode emoji releases or World Emoji Day. Those are separate milestones: Unicode manages character encoding, while World Emoji Day began later as an annual celebration. Emojipedia is a reference publication, not an encoding standard.