Who hasn't received a missive peppered with emoticons? What would IM be like without being able to temper your comments with a :P to show you're joking or a :) to make a bitchy remark sound friendlier?
Well, Carnegie Mellon professor Scott Fahlman claims that he invented the first symbol and that today is the humble emoticon's 25th birthday. In a forum discussion on September 19th, 1982, Fahlman was talking about how to show humour online and wrote "I propose the following character sequence for joke markers: :-)" Fahlman wrote. "Read it sideways." He concedes that others may have had the idea, and the AP was unable to find a computer science or linguistics professor willing to validate the claim to being the first.
Anyone who has ever tried to have a funny or sensitive conversation with anyone in a forum or over IM knows that emoticons can come in extremely handy, but maybe we shouldn't be thanking Professor Fahlman for creating such a lazy and detached way of communicating (if indeed he did create it). Ah well, little point in speculating as it's definitely here to stay. Let's all celebrate with some emoticon jewellery.
From: Five reasons Foursquare will be this year's Twitter