The End of Emojli: The Post-Mortem

What was it like running Emojli, the world's first emoji-only messenger? Why did we kill it? Do we have any regrets? And who's the best organisation to handle an unsubscribe request? All this and more from a Park Bench somewhere in London. Also, huskies. The Park Bench starts here!
Here's the moment we killed Emojli on vine: vine.co/v/eX2WBpMZZhq
MATT: kzbin.info
TOM: kzbin.info

[@JulianPritchard]

The irony of watching this in the future when Vine is also a dead app

[@DaCoolX]

And they joked about doing it on Citation Needed, which also had its last season published.

[@thegardenofeatin5965]

Vine was a weird thing; people used and liked it, but no one figured out how to make any money with it.

[@maxk4324]

literally came to the comments to see say this

[@JGnLAU8OAWF6]

Now we have TikTok

[@eamesaerospace2805]

Антон Южаков I know what I’d rather have

[@HarryRobins]

Interestingly, one of the sources to the Emojli Wikipedia article is this very video.

[@gabrieltellez8148]

because the people who made it are talking about it?

[@HarryRobins]

@@gabrieltellez8148 I think I made this comment bc it's like a citing loop.

[@eekee6034]

Citeception

[@thewpbard]

Tom: "We can talk about this on Citation Needed at some point now." [THEY LAUGH] Tom: No, because what we're doing there, is we're setting ourselves up for a 15 minute roasting from Gary and Chris. That is just handing them ... 'Here you go, here is a really easy ball. Knock it out the park.'" Not going to lie, still an episode I would love to watch. Even almost two years after this video.

[@skyew.3939]

I feel like it would be even better as a title for two of these people are lying because either a) you get really bad lies of what it is or b) everyone knows what it is and the main contest is to see how many facts each of them can say about it

[@dominichines9996]

Off the park bench*

[@rileylong5250]

@@skyew.3939 it could also be something along the lines of everyone knows what they're saying is bullshit. But the goal is who can come up with the most outlandish facts

[@witerabid]

I can't help but think that they both had accounts and registered them early enough to get 🐌 and 🍞 respectively. And, of course, Chris will insist it never happened.

[@WyvernYT]

"Emojli. It's a vitamin supplement. Popular in Sweden and Denmark, back in the day." "Banned in Belgium, though." "Oh, yeah, I heard about that. No good reason, just a trade dispute."

[@mattandtom]

And away we go with the first Park Bench! Thanks to everyone who sent this question in: here's some closure on what it was like running, and then killing, Emojli.

[@MaxEric93]

+Matt and Tom This is actually really fun. You need to keep this channel going.

[@ParallaxScene]

+Ibrahim Al-rubeyi I looked it up, there is a commercial.

[@MAlanThomasII]

Congratulations: Google now auto-completes the phrase "squirrel farting in park".

[@danepatton2252]

Bring back Emojli!

[@ThePJDurham]

Talking about deleting an app and posting about it on a later dead app

[@danlyle531]

I love the moments when Tom is trying to be serious or make a dry joke, and loses it completely.

[@MrVinney96]

7 months later, still waiting on that Citation Needed episode talking about Emojli.

[@kj9004]

Make that a couple years

[@oz_jones]

It would be amazing as a last episode

[@maxguerra9155]

seven years friend

[@joelvivian7585]

"squirrel farting in park daily mail" is a suggestion that comes up when you get to "squirrel fart...'

[@charleyatkins9094]

Joel Vivian also squirrel farts out fire

[@cyborglion4179]

Probably because of this .

[@ajernandes]

I was about to try and find your vine, but then I remembered.

[@gwenynorisu6883]

Twitter claims the archive still works, but I can't get anything out of it. Like at all.

[@sloanemactire8780]

It'd be really amusing if Gary or Chris would choose Emojli for "Two of These People Are Lying". It'd be a dead giveaway as to who was telling the truth, but the answers would be hilarious. ;)

[@QlueDuPlessis]

I should have been in bed an hour ago. I have to get up for work in five hours time. I still have 5 tabs open with Matt and Tom videos to watch!! And every video I watch gives me two more videos I still want to watch, It's like battling the bloody Hydra!!!

[@shoootme]

oh dear i just started to type squeral farts in, and then it filled in park, thanks tom and mat, you may have broke youtube search

[@WildBluntHickok]

There's a game where you try to guess the top 5 google completions for half a sentence. It's essentially just Family Feud but without the 2 team dynamic. Always fun when one of the top 5 is broken english so you never could've guessed it anyway.

[@MaraK_dialmformara]

YORK-shire! YORK-shire! YORK--sorry, old Technical Difficulties joke.

[@Fawkes42]

+Mara K Glad I wasn't the only one to think this

[@TTLandco]

We did it a few times at techdif live.

[@MaraK_dialmformara]

TTLandco Yay! I look forward to seeing that.

[@jason9875]

Mara Katz shennnnnly

[@LLHLMHfilms]

😄👆📲👇📵😞 Translation: I was happy. I clicked on this video. I was sad. No emiojli. :(

[@ChallengeTheNarrative]

😢

[@krim7]

"Most recent Vine." Me in 2020: "Uhhhh..."

[@jakeodev]

okaysies

[@CaseyCook25]

This channel is such a great idea! Tom, you are always so polished in your explaining of everything, so it's fun to see you unedited just hanging out with Matt. I've become addicted to all your vids, especially Citation Needed and it's forerunner, whatever it's called with Trivial Pursuit. Please continue being awesome.

[@fruit3193]

Did they just say Vine? Wow that dates this video.

[@Taurmin]

Aww bless, Tom not thinking he was notable enough to have a Wikipedia article.

[@KohuGaly]

I remember watching the original video and felt really sorry for you :-D It somehow reminds me of setting up a band, recording a few songs and then realizing we actually have to play the music live :-D HORROR!

[@Gulliolm]

Talking about a dead app, another dead app (vine), about a format thats dead on a format thats also dead...

[@werethless12]

Sucks that we can't see that Vine anymore... :/

[@kujmous]

{sad face} {fax machine} {red book} {Easter Island head}

[@DaVince21]

☹️📠📑🗿

[@AyrisX86]

@@DaVince21 the book isn't red, I'm calling the Unicode consortium on you

[@CapSora]

😟📠📖🗿

[@MouseFloof]

I would love to see Emojli on Citation Needed

[@alix4935]

my favorite part of this video is the lighting in the background making it look like they were surrounded by fire.

[@christinecrawford]

Thanks for the update guys!! I had watched your big video from the release weekend but since I'm on Android, I never followed up to see if I could get it. I had wondered what ever happened with it when I binge watched the last Citation Needed season when you released it. I'm glad everything was "sorted" without any big issues for you guys. (that was the first time I'd heard "sorted" used like that, aside from Sorted Foods' videos! lol!) Btw, I am anxiously awaiting the next season of Citation Needed! Let's crack on with that, ok? 😉 In the meantime, I'm off to rewatch 5 minutes of wallaby butler material....

[@stretchx]

I can already tell I'm going to enjoy the next episodes in this series. It was Interesting to hear more about this. If you still have the domain name by April fools next year, You should do something & try to get it picked up by news sites. :P

[@qwertyTRiG]

You two bounce off each other really well.

[@thecassman]

Episode 1 and 15,000 subscribers... That's impressive!! Great video guys.

[@TR123]

hah and now vine is shutting down

[@VikoTheBassist]

I've already forgotten about Vine

[@pickle5666]

Oh god no. Now the viners and coming to wage war on KZbin, the attacks, it's everyday bro.

[@gwenynorisu6883]

It's quite the irony that something much bigger and more heavily used than Emojli ended up dying, what... maybe a year later?

[@spacewarpphotography1667]

@Nickname34 Exactly 8)

[@grantgravity_plus]

Excellent. Can't wait for the next one.

[@JustATempest]

Hearing them say they have a video on Vine really dates the video

[@9miinox]

"I haven't used Vine in months!"

[@JoshPullen]

Love this channel! Don't quietly bury it please.

[@WouterWeggelaar]

Thanks for that story guys. I thoroughly enjoyed that. Including all side tracks. It must have been crazy when people started calling for equity et cetera...

[@Theuploadair]

more of this matt and tom

[@TJB923]

Question for you guys, specifically Tom: In the video you did for TedX in 2012 kzbin.info/www/bejne/mmebnpZ-Z9uYebc, you had a very dynamic presentation, both graphically on the screen and in the software compiling live results from twitter. I'd be really interested to hear about the setup you had, including the software you used (or maybe created!?) to take tweets and incorporate them into a dataset, then the method you used to integrate those results into a slideshow/presentation with dynamic text, updating live. All the best!

[@timgrohmann1388]

Why were there only 5 rows in your database? Seems kinda strange... :P

[@mattandtom]

MySQL stores its list of tables as a database - so weirdly, we got "5 rows deleted" when deleting the 5 tables that made up the database! --Tom

[@timgrohmann1388]

So it's the message that was messed up. Learnt sth new :D Btw, luv ya vids

[@chrisberry7640]

Do you guys have any intention of making any more audio episodes of that trivia card game? I think it's hysterical, I love citation needed and I'd love for the other one to come back

[@MasreMe]

Rest In Peace Emojli

[@xD-ne1lv]

You should do this as a podcast. That would be cool.

[@francescamarriott3970]

rip in peace emoj.li

[@edwardphilibin3151]

The ad that ran for me at the front of this video had two people sitting on a park bench with dogs.

[@zJoriz]

I think you were about to say how many users actually cared for their data / downloaded it / reacted after you announced the end of the app. Did you see any of that?

[@davidioanhedges]

That you did it properly ... is why I follow both of you ...

[@ragnkja]

At 11:43, I can't help but hear the Allegro section (from bar 25) of Edvard Grieg's _Norwegian dance №2_

[@unakamillasteinsen4817]

Great video! I wish I had known about Emojli when it was up. Shame you had to kill it, I would totally have used it. And yay for The Technical Difficulties!

[@Jackie0102030405]

Introducing: Emojli: this time we actually worked on it

[@g3tog4]

Is this the same bench that started the idea for Emojli. I remember a park bench in the Behind the scenes video. If so that would fitting.

[@muppist]

If you ever do something unique like this again, before shutting it down, you might ask someone to sponsor it's upkeep for a year. At say $500 per year, surely there's someone on the planet that would think it was worth doing, even if their only reward was the satisfaction of knowing that they kept it running that year.

[@ryanhovey4251]

i cant wait for emojili to appear on citation needed. (almost) random article button dont fail us now.

[@JewishMusicToronto]

Thanks for sharing!

[@Stormfox93]

Great video guys.

[@Veptis]

Did you at least used the data for some linguistic study? Like what emojis are most used or what combinations are used.

[@StrokeMahEgo]

It was probably mostly: 💩💩💩💩

[@sapnupua5]

they said no to that question in the main talk two years prior to this video

[@Starwarsfan161]

The concept is fantastic, I do feel that a donation account could be set up which keeps the money and pays the apps running cost until the account runs out funds. I certainly don't feel it should come out of your pocket. I accept that it wouldn't run on future device but feel it could be left to die out more slowly. Did you ever release the code or would someone have to contact you directly about it (don't destroy it please).

[@metaparalysis3441]

Watching this in the future when the emoji movie exists

[@pixelproductions9147]

When citation needed and when more benches? May i suggest Prince's Park, Burntwood & La Treille park, Switzerland

[@hellterminator]

Now cracks a noble heart. Goodnight, sweet prince; And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.

[@imark7777777]

Oh shucks that would've made a great subject for the last citation needed.

[@timonsmind6899]

I like that they put the end of emojli on vine...

[@AsbjornOlling]

I like this, but I definitely sense a quality gap between this and other similar shows (like Hello Internet or Diggnation). Maybe it's because this is unedited, but it might just be because it's Episode #1.

[@RobKinneySouthpaw]

The mention of Citation Needed is reminding me that I'm hungry for some.....Mystery Biscuiiiiits.

[@greenaum]

Either there's 2 of him, or the bloke with the husky bike-sled lives near me now, see him now and then in town, mushing away.

[@geoffroi-le-Hook]

The Wikipedia page was last edited at 23:59 UTC on 6 April 2021, as I type this on 10 April of that year

[@NathanDavis2]

i just looked up squirrel farting in park ...

[@ChallengeTheNarrative]

That's nuts 🌰

[@taiyihanle]

Couldn't see either, both are gone

[@MuradBeybalaev]

What part of support emails were purely user error related? Precision appreciated.

[@TheFakeVIP]

Massive international collaborative effort of standardisation The plural of mouse is mice, Tom.

[@Eli-gn3km]

The references to vine gave me wipelash

[@floobdedoop2892]

What the heck is sparkling behind Matt's shoulder?? Are there fireflies in the UK? Is it tinsel?

[@TazBetTactics]

Tom, I have been wondering if there is going to be a "Citation Needed: Season 4". I have read somewhere that there would be but I cant remember where. If there is going to be another season do we have an approximate release date at all? Thanks.

[@sidewinder15599]

That would be a brilliant Citation Needed. Just close the laptop and start the episode.

[@maxgoesracing]

I'm going to be very disappointed if season 5 of Citation Needed doesn't have an Emojli episode.

[@dominichines9996]

Man, Vine. Haven't heard that name in a long time

[@TheButterism]

oh i always presumed matts job was being toms camera man/sidekick

[@Jmanthedude]

I find it so funny that vine is now also shut down.

[@bacul165]

That's weird, I only heard about the Yo-App yesterday on the No such Thing as a Fish-Podcast!

[@nomasan]

... They still had Vine ;( ... I want it back

[@JustOneAsbesto]

RIP sweet prince.

[@milo-etcetera]

☠🍬👑

[@davisranger]

Emojli is something I am sad I wasn't around for

[@piperisle9674]

oh, please please please do Emojli on Citation Needed.

[@austing5951]

Emojli was a front page news story in the national Australian newspaper

[@ericpratt9554]

May The Park Bench with you.

[@thecodingethan]

You mentioned in the video about sharing the code, did you post it online somewhere?

[@mattandtom]

+Coding Ethan We haven't put the code online, and currently have no plans to do so. Sorry! --Matt

[@gonetea4081]

+Matt and Tom I wonder what would happen if you put a copy of this online and make it open source Ahh that would be quite funny

[@gwenynorisu6883]

I think you mean "terrifying". Or maybe "annoying". Possibly "terroying".

[@novembersullivan5852]

Emojli as a topic on Citation Needed: Please make this happen.

[@zombieslayer1468]

would i severely regret if i tried to do this

[@stupidburp]

Did you do a secure wipe of the data such as zeroing out everything?

[@jacobmpp]

That got used on NCIS the tv show

[@mcp12300]

I thought the title said the end of emoji, wha?! that got a reaction XP

[@flamaniswow]

Pfft, hundreds of miles... Sounds like a trip to the next town over.

[@dmarsub]

9:50 hah... and vine is down now as well.

[@olivergs9840]

I want to see "two of these people are lying" about emojili

[@lucaayfmlyysiaejdsrtnnervd4646]

This is honestly sad. i was to late for emojli.

[@emojo1990]

could you do a video of things NOT to do in london?

[@Mousy677]

emojo1990 Oxford Street and Piccadilly Circus. also the London Eye

[@WildBluntHickok]

Knock a palace guard's hat off should probably be top of the list.

[@isabellamorris7902]

@@Mousy677 5 years late but Ox Street/Piccadilly Circus are lovely at night with headphones turned up loud, or if you take a bus through them.

[@flxschrbr]

brilliant :)

[@Fawnarix]

When are the new episodes of Citation Needed going to be released? Are they going on Tom's channel or on this one?

[@ragnkja]

+Lupyrius Presumably they're going on the same channel as before.

[@maxgoesracing]

+Lupyrius I heard that they were going to release them in December or January.

[@thorstenensor361]

If you ever film one episode from australia, please film upside down.

[@MateusSFigueiredo]

What's that bit about they being very efficient at unsubscribing?

[@sockdivine6144]

Tom not thinking he's notable enough for a Wikipedia article is hilarious to me

[@zlotnleo]

How about you guys mention a location of the bench in the beginning of a video?

[@PassionPopsicle]

"In a park"...? ;p

[@thegardenofeatin5965]

You should have sold it whole to someone. Just "Here, five grand and it's yours."

[@prosincr]

I would have used that if it still was up.

[@Tophu48548]

Who in their right mind would dislike this?