An emoji is Oxford's word of the year, but don't be surprised

Apparently the word of the year, doesn't have to be a word. I'm Bridget Carey, this is your CNET Update. [MUSIC] It's time to bid farewell to language as we know it. The word of the year is not a word at all. For the first time ever, the fine folks at Oxford Dictionary decided that the word of the year should be. An emoji, specifically it's the face with tears of joy used when you're crying laughing. But before you weep for the future of language, Oxford did say that this emoji best reflected the ethos, mood, and preoccupation of 2015. And according to some statistics, it is the most used emoji in the world this. This year. Of course, these cartoons are growing in popularity as more people get smartphones that use the icons. And it's also picking up with the help of social media. Remember when Hilary Clinton tried to connect with young people by asking them to share their thoughts about the complex issue of student loan debt In three emojis or less. Domino's Pizza now let's you order a pizza just by tweeting the emoji slice, and you can even buy emoji keyboards for your desktop computer. Because apparently we need tools to emoji faster. Facebook is testing out emoji reaction buttons that go beyond the thumbs up, which let you mark a post with different faces or a heart for love. And Twitter seems to also be moving in that direction. A Twitter user noticed his app had the ability to select from 12 emojis beyond the heart, including the 100 sign and a party confetti horn. This option was hidden inside of a developer build of Twitter's iPhone app. When asked by the Verge, Twitter's comment about it was just One emoji response. The monkey with hands over its mouth. As our communication changes, so does the way we listen to music. Pandora is evolving to become like other on demand streaming apps. Where you can request a specific song you want. And Pandora announced it would buy up most of its rival Rdio. For $75 million. And next year, the plan is for Pandora to include a feature for on demand listening, similar to Spotify or Apple Music. Meanwhile, Beats Music is shutting down at the end of the month, on November 30. It also was a paid on demand music service. Apple bought Beats and it's encouraging users to migrate to the Apple Music app Which has now been around for six months, and it's also available on Android devices. And we say goodbye to another music service forever, Zune. Yeah. This week Microsoft shut down all of Zune's services for any of you that still used the Zune player for connecting online to download music from the marketplace, or the Zune music pass subscription program. Which actually change to the Groove music service. Back in 2008, Microsoft stopped making Zunes. But now by killing the services, the Zune name shall no longer be spoken in the halls of Microsoft but we shall never forget. That's it for this CNET news update and there's more at www.cnet.com. From our studios in New York, I'm Bridget Carey. [SOUND] [MUSIC]