The Names of The Most Loved People, According to Emojis

Finding the most loved person on Earth

I woke up today with a start. An idea, clear as day, flashed before my eyes. If love can only be expressed by emoji, and emoji use can be tracked using Brandwatch, then I can find the most loved people in the world.

I launched from my bed, threw on my cupid suit and ran towards my workplace. In a world of division, who truly bought people together? I just had to know.

My mind was racing, how was I going to do it? Was knowing the most loved person going to blow my mind?

I tried to steady myself, drunk on the prospect of my imminent discovery.

Into Brandwatch Analytics I typed the fateful words:

raw:❤️ AND site:twitter

The mentions began to flood in. There were so many. Too many. How was I going to control the data, to find the most common names?

“HOW?” I shouted. Luckily, my colleagues were not yet in the office to witness my fury.

Rage bubbled through my veins as I scrolled through the mentions. So many names. Such limited brain power to process them.

Then I realized. The new Brandwatch topic cloud – I could surface the most commonly used names in tweets that contained heart emojis.

Composed, ready, I navigated to the topics tab.

What I saw was a mess.

Emojis, random words, BTS – these weren’t the names I sought, the names I desparately needed.

This topic cloud needed pruning, so I went into the filter section. There it was, the only checkbox I needed.

“People”.

I clicked. I closed my eyes. When I opened them 15 minutes later the holy names were revealed to me.

The results

The top three names I was presented with were:

3. Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson

2. Jason Statham

1. Kevin Hart

At first I was joyous – I knew the truth! But then I clicked into the mentions, and I found out that these heart emoji’s tweets were almost all from the same sources.

Dwayne and Jason’s new movie, Hobbs and Shaw, invited tweeters to favorite their promotional tweet, using a heart emoji to communicate this. Meanwhile, a comedy video where Kevin Hart is surprised with a Chinese New Year celebration was retweeted over and over, cementing his association with the heart emoji in my rigorous study.

I wasn’t looking at the most loved people on Earth. I was looking at some Twitter mentions that had gained popularity.

The focus wasn’t love.

Changing tactics

In order to view the true list, I would have to remove retweets and look at individual mentions of the heart emoji and the people who were being mentioned alongside it. I used the quick search box to remove them.

Again, I shut my eyes. I let my breathing relax, found some peace.

When I finally peeked through the slits in my fingers, the results surprised me.

It wasn’t a list of celebrities I looked at, it was just single names.

The names of the most loved people

5. Shawn

4. Chelsea

3. Taylor

2. Mary

1. James