It is the 'body language' of the digital age. 92% of those who 'exist' online have used some form of them in their communications. 1/3 do it daily. In 2020, about half of Instagram posts included them. On Facebook 5,000,000,000 were used daily, while on Twitter they 'were' in 20% of 'tweets'. Research has proven that it is the most guaranteed way to engage people with promotional actions of any brands.
At a time when interpersonal contact has become an endangered species—not just a pandemic—emojis have become "a new type of language," as the Wire wrote. And they have become a new language 'because it is the most simple and comprehensive way to explain how we feel '. What we want. It is time to praise those who gave them to us. And to get to emojis, we have to start with emoticons.
In Britannica, an emoticon is defined as a symbol used in computer-mediated communications intended to convey a facial expression to communicate the writer's emotional state. 'When the Internet was entirely text-based (late 60's early 90's) emoticons were assigned to the American Standard Code for Information Interchange (character encoding standard for electronic communication) and were read in italics. Although it has been claimed that the first emoticon appeared in 1979, the first documented use came from American programmer Scott E. Fahlman on 9/19/1982.
The use of emoticons had caused reactions. Critics argued that they eroded people's ability to communicate clearly and use language creatively in cyberspace, as well as other forms of writing. Some have said it's a lazy way of communicating. Others how it will negatively affect the credibility of the author, in the emails.
Proponents argued that it was going to help online communication more than it would hurt it. At the most basic level, emoticons are perhaps the crudest attempt to address the issue of emotion between users in computer environments, absent the high-bandwidth capabilities of close-to-me interactions. They support non-verbal communication in text messages and emails and clarify the tone of the message, without the need for long explanations ".
Now let's see what all this means.
The word 'emoticon' came from the union of the terms 'emotion' and 'icon'. The breakthrough aimed to convey facial expressions that evoked emotions or moods in images when we were first introduced to the digital age. 'Click' on 'a picture is worth a thousand words', in order to save the user the time and effort of a thousand words, in short communications through mobile phones and computers - when they were of limited potential. They involved combinations of punctuation, letters and numbers that 'gave' a picture - associated with an emotion. The limitation that existed - in terms of what was available to 'make' the image - also gave double interpretations to each 'product'.
Really, do you remember (or can you guess) what the first emoticon in history was?
At 11:44 in the morning on September 19, 1982, Scott Fahlman - now 72 years old - a programmer and professor at Carnegie Mellon University (in the Language Technologies institute and in the computer department) decided to put an end to the confusion that prevailed, with the messaging tunnel with his partners. There was always something on the list that wasn't about work. So he decided to separate the fun from the serious by writing what you will see on the university's message board.
He suggested using the :-) character for jokes and also suggested a solution for what wasn't funny::-(
'Smiley' as it was later called, became the first emoticon and Fahlman became its 'father'. Years later it was found that after all, Fahlman was the first, but not in the use of typographical symbols that expressed emotions. He was the one who used them before anyone else online. Researchers reached as far back as the mid-19th century, where they discovered the use of Morse code symbols for the same purpose.
In 1881 the American satirical magazine called 'Puck' had published what we know today as emoticons, in their handmade version. Ambroce Bierce, short story writer, journalist, poet and Civil War veteran had suggested what he 'christened' ironic laughter and it was this:-- \__/ -- Inspiration not properly appreciated. Hence the next step was taken in May 1967, when Raph Reppert published the following in the Baltimore Sunday Sun - and brought Reader's Digest back into the limelight.
Smiley caused controversy
Yes, 'Smiley' had been around since 1967, but it was missing the 'nose'. Or the imaginary face frame, where Fahlman based his continued efforts. He didn't make any money from them. This was something that the Loufrani family did, through the business they created in 1996 the 'Smiley Company', in France (headquarters today are in London). There you owe the first yellow 'faces' of all expressions. That's also where the royalty money goes, which the family got in 1971. That is, then they secured the rights of everyone who 'fell' into the 'smiley' category. It was then that journalist Franklin Loufrani used an ideogram referring to 'smiling face', 'happy face' and 'smilie' to indicate to France-Soir readers which stories were good news and decided to patent them all.
Today, the Smiley Company owns the rights to all Smiley symbols in more than 100 countries - not including the US. And it doesn't belong in the US, as Harvey Ross Ball, the graphic designer who inspired Smiley in 1963, lives there.
The Smiley Company is one of the top 100 companies in the world in the field of brand licensing. Tiduto? As Shopify writes “when your niece's birthday comes around, you don't have to look far to find a gift with Minnie Mouse printed on it. Why; Because of brand licensing. Disney doesn't make all the T-shirts or coffee mugs with their characters. Thousands of other businesses contract with Disney for the right to use the characters and other trademarks. They also manage production by manufacturing the products. The terms of cooperation are detailed in the contract. For example, the company that buys the rights often pays a percentage of sales to the company that owns the trademarks. ".
The Loufrani family manufactures, through the Smiley Company, from textiles, party supplies, car accessories to toys for licensed brand partners. It has an income of 185,000,000 euros a year. He has also received money from Levi Strauss&Co for the use of Smiley - in addition to the obvious ones he had from the telecommunications companies.
From 1999 there was an evolution in the subject and it was called 'emoji', which appeared to dissolve any limitation that existed until then. First, the word is of Japanese origin and was the result of the contraction of 'e' (image) with 'mo' (write) and 'ji' (character). They started as pictograms of faces before everything was added. The first belongs to Shigetaka Kurita and was a 12X12 pixels (18 bytes) image, inspired by magna art (feu) What did he make? A heart. This is how kaomoji was born, from kao (face) and mo (write) and ji (character).
In the 1990s, the company NTT DoCoMo (dominant telecommunications operator in Japan, with DoCoMo coming from do communications over the mobile network - and the word as a word meaning 'everywhere') released a pager that was aimed at teenagers. The main priority was to be able to simplify communication - which, among other things, had a word limit in emails
The then 25-year-old Kurita was a member of the 'i-mode' team, an early internet platform for mobile phones that aimed to design an attractive contact mode to convey information in a simple and concise manner. It made the words (eg 'cloudy', in the weather report) a picture. He noted that he had no idea about coding. He had a degree in economics. “I made a list of what was necessary and divided it into three categories. In the first set, I put what I thought was necessary for anyone who is on the road all day, with a mobile phone in hand" , he had told ABC. There he clarified that "the heart is the reason I decided to make emoji in the first place. If you put it at the end of every sentence and the most negative words become positive ".
When the company "removed" the buzzer for entrepreneurs, it decided to "turn off" the heart. A lot of subscribers changed companies - because they were all coordinated now - and therefore NTT DoCoMo put the emoji again, to include what its man made for the first time on a mobile phone, in 1999.
All 176 created by Kurita were smashing. That is, they became global trends. However, the creator never received more money than his monthly salary. Currently, there are 3,353 emojis available, while competition has emerged since 2007 when Apple simply didn't want to pay Kurita's company and made its own. Google followed. In 2015, they added those about the diversity of people (in skin color) and a set for same-sex couples.
It is estimated that 5,000,000,000 are used daily on Facebook and Facebook Messenger. What has been preferred like no other, on Facebook and Twitter is the cry. The heart was #1 on Instagram. In 2015, Oxford Dictionaries named emoji as its 'word of the year'.
How much do creators 'make'
A man who has made four emojis announced on Quora that he was getting $1000 a month from downloads from one. He had spent $150. In order for a creation to be listed, it must be approved by the independent authority Unicode Consortium (it exists since 2010 and checks whether the 13 basic conditions are met). Each proposal is analyzed in 10 pages. There the creators write the purpose it serves, the reason it is needed and provides data that justify its existence. Then the interested parties are asked to devote from 50 to 150 hours to support the application.