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
Happy birthday!
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?
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 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
;-)