Pizza via emoji: Marketers ride texting craze with branded icons

A fresh hot pizza is now just an emoji away. I am Bridget Carey, this is your cnet update. [MUSIC] Emojis are a powerful force in our digital culture. The cute strange little icons programmed into our smartphone keyboards are changing the way we communicate with our friends. And marketers want a piece of the action. Domino's now lets you order pizza by tweeting out the pizza emoji icon. Of course, to better understand this technology, we did a deep investigation; a deep dish investigation, you might say. To order by tweet, you need to first set up a Domino's profile, and something called an easy order, but if you've never made a Domino's order For. You may find yourself annoyed. The only way to set your easy order for emoji tweet ordering is to first place a boring old school online order and then it saves all those details, payment, address, toppings as your easy order. You also have to put your Twitter account in your Domino's profile and follow Domino's on Twitter, and after all that's done you can send a tweet at Domino's with the pizza slice emoji, and that account will send you a private direct message asking you to confirm with the thumbs up emoji and that's it. And 30 minutes or less, it's pizza Time some marketers are creating their own unique emoji icons outside of what available with standard keyboards. Star Wars worked with Twitter to make special C3PO storm trooper and BB8 icons when you Star Wars related hashtags. Other brands are taking it a step further. And making their own sticker emoji keyboards. In similar fashion to the stickers on Facebook messenger, you can download an app that will put animated cartoon expressions inside your keyboard to send to friends. They'll see even if they don't have the sticker pack because it shows up as a photo. The company Swift has made several for different brands, including Miller Beer and 1-800-Flowers. And these aren't always free. The cutesy Florida Gator's pack Costs a dollar to download, but something to keep in mind, companies love this, because they can track exactly what you're sending. To send these characters, you have to go to settings, add the keyboard, and give it full access. Which warns you that anything you send will be shared with the company. So beware of the M&M keyboard, which can track everything you type with its candy colored keyboard. The restaurant chain Chili's isn't using customer emoges, but tech trends have actually influenced the menu. Chili's changed its Food so it looks better on Instagram. It puts an egg wash on the burger buns to make it more photogenic as it glistens under the lights, and since so many of us can't put down our phones during meals, KFC's experimenting with a new type of Bluetooth keyboard tray. You can type on it without getting your Phone covered in fried chicken grease. Oh, the struggles we live with today, I tell you. And that's the tech news update, and there's more finger clicking good at CNET.com. From our studios in New York, I'm Bridget Kerry.