Emojis: Kids may love their simplicity, but programmers will loathe their complexities.

Last month, the Instagram photo-sharing service started recognizing emojis in its hashtag searches, making the company the first major social networking service to offer this capability. A user could affix a sprightly emoji to a photo hashtag so the snap could be found by other users searching for that emoji. The Internet rejoiced.

Now, one of the Instagram engineers responsible for this technical feat has shared the company’s approach in a blog item posted Wednesday that should be perused by any developer looking to outfit a social Internet service or consumer app with similar emoji goodness. Turns out that supporting the little digital icons is no easy task.

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