Twitter launches special emoji for Diwali

In a first-of-its-kind interactive activity, thousands of Indians participated in a unique 48-hour Twitter Poll @TwitterIndia to choose the colour of this year's customised Twitter diwali 'diya' emoji.

Users chose the colour from the four options of orange, blue, green, and pink. The festive orange was the clear winner with approximately 50 per cent of the votes in its favour.

Millions of Indians across the world can use the orange-coloured 'diya' emoji in their tweets starting today, and can do so for the next four-days of the festival period. All they have to do is tweet using #HappyDiwali, #HappyDeepavali, #Diwali, #Deepavali, as well as Hindi hashtags #दिवाली or #दीपावली, and the 'diya' emoji will appear next to the hashtag.

Speaking on the initiative, Keya Madhvani, head of lifestyle and culture partnerships, Twitter India, says, "It is exciting to bring everyone together for a cultural moment through this delightful and beautiful emoji. We want Indians everywhere to engage in conversations on our platform, and light up Twitter by sharing their favourite Diwali moments, videos, photos, and fun tweets around the festival."

Last year, when Twitter launched the Diwali emoji with Bollywood superstars Salman Khan '@BeingSalmanKhan' and Sonam Kapoor '@sonamkapoor', the platform reverberated with diverse voices in 1.8 million tweets from people across the world.

This year, Twitter also launched special emojis for moments of national cultural significance such as Ganeshotsav, International Day of Yoga, Independence Day, and Republic Day. The social networking site also launched its first-ever emoji for a the TV series #BiggBoss10 this year to celebrate one of the big moments in entertainment on Twitter.