The smiley turns 25 today. :-)
Twenty-five years ago, Carnegie Mellon University professor Scott E. Fahlman says, he was the first to use three keystrokes — a colon followed by a hyphen and a parenthesis — as a horizontal "smiley face" in a computer message.
Link - via Digg
I am guilty of not being a CAREFUL READER.
Yes - I see NOW that the emoticon is what was being discussed, not the yellow smiley face in a circle.
I promise to be more careful in the future. hehe
;-)
As to the smileys, it's interesting to think about how different online communication would be today without them. I wonder what shorthand might have popped up to indicate, "Please don't shoot me in the face, that was supposed to be a joke" if it weren't for smileys? Somehow "j/k" just isn't nearly as enjoyable ...
(I must take issue, though, with the "newer" smileys thrust upon us by IM progams - the first time I used a smiley in AIM 6.0 and all those giant transparent happy faces suddenly cascaded across my screen it startled the bejeezus out of me - simple and unsurprising is GOOD imo when it comes to smileys =P
I can't be the only person here who was a teen in the early 80s who can remember smilies being around prior to 1982.
Anyone?