Unlocking emoticons based on professional skills

A computer program product for unlocking emoticons based on professional skills, the computer program product comprising:

• one or more non-transitory computer-readable storage media and program instructions stored on the one or more non-transitory computer-readable storage media capable of performing a method, the method comprising:
• receiving, by a computer, a user message or an emoticon database search term from a user, wherein a user's professional skill and an associated emoticon is determined based on the user message or the emoticon database search term;
• retrieving a plurality of user professional skills from a professional skills site;
• determining whether a number of endorsements for the user's professional skill exceeds a threshold value, wherein the threshold value is set for each emoticon in an emoticon database;
• and
• in response to determining that the number of endorsements for the user's professional skill does exceed the threshold value, performing an unlocking action that gives the user access to the associated emoticon in one or more messaging applications based on the determination.

A computer system for unlocking emoticons based on professional skills, the computer system comprising:

• one or more computer processors, one or more computer-readable storage media, and program instructions stored on one or more of the computer-readable storage media for execution by at least one of the one or more processors capable of performing a method, the method comprising:
• receiving, by a computer, a user message or an emoticon database search term from a user, wherein a user's professional skill and an associated emoticon is determined based on the user message or the emoticon database search term;
• retrieving a plurality of user professional skills from a professional skills site;
• determining whether a number of endorsements for the user's professional skill exceeds a threshold value, wherein the threshold value is set for each emoticon in an emoticon database;
• and
• in response to determining that the number of endorsements for the user's professional skill does exceed the threshold value, performing an unlocking action that gives the user access to the associated emoticon in one or more messaging applications based on the determination.