The Development That Made the Whole Web :) … “The Digital Smiley Face Turns 25″

30Sep07

clipped from thewrongadvices.com Everyone has used the smiley face at one point or another, but do you know how its use started?Twenty-five years ago a Carnegie Mellon University professor named Scott E. Fahlman sent a message proposing the use of a colon followed by a hyphen and a parenthesis as a joke marker. It is the earliest recorded use of the smiley face, which has since become ubiquitous with online communication.Love them or hate them, emoticons do provide a quick and easy way to show emotion in an otherwise detached medium.

Dan’s The Wrong Advices Blog (www.thewrongadvices.com) posted this story. Constantly bombarded with flashing smiley face banner ads, I shutter at the mention of emoticons. However, this is a charming story about the first digital smiley face and I enjoyed Dan’s statement, “Love them or hate them, emoticons do proved a quick and easy way to show emotion in an otherwise detached medium.” You can find another interesting story on emoticons at http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/29/fashion/29emoticon.html?_r=1&oref=slogin.

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