Smiley Faces At Small Company Making Popular Emoji Apps

Mobile apps that allow users to create their own emojis or share the stylized images of NBA star Stephen Curry and other celebrities are paying off for a small upstate New York company.

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Moji Maker- with its mix-and-match menu of happy, angry or goofy faces - was the No. 2 paid app on the iTunes chart as of last Friday morning. The company that made it, Moji, recently scored big with its Curry app and is following up with similarly styled apps for two Olympic athletes who won gold this week: swimmer Michael Phelps and gymnast Simone Biles.

The company of about a dozen people is based far from Silicon Valley and celeb-heavy Los Angeles in Binghamton, New York, where the three principals - all between 30 and 32 years old - grew up. None of them had a background in programming. Their success provides a window into a quickly evolving emoji market that didn’t even exist until recently.