Menu

Items at this page	Other emoticons pages
The definition of an emoticon	Emoticons
The first smiley	Static smiley's
Static Smiley's	Animated smiley's (angry)
Animated smiley's	Animated smiley's (happy)
Smiley and the future	Animated smiley's (relation)
	Animated smiley's (other)

The definition of an emoticons
Emoticons are emotions shown by icons. There're two kind of emoticons: text emoticons and pictures. When you look at a text-emoticon it's important you turn your head 25% to the left. Now you can see the text is actually a picture! Most well-known emoticon is the smiley      :-)  Text  emoticons are used in sms-messages and in e-mails. In forums, chat-sites etc. you can often type a text emoticon, which will be translated in a picture.


The first  smiley
Picture emoticons are often called smiley's .The first smiley has been made  in 1963 by the American Harvey Ball. He made this smiley for an insurance company and he earned 25 euro for it!  This smiley was yellow, had two black dots as eyes and a smiling mouth.   Smiley  is happy, simple and because of his yellow colour asking for attention. These are probarbly the reasons for its success.  Years later you can see smiley's at T-shirts, buttons, stickers, chocolate (M&M's), coffee cups and also at the....internet!  Usualy a smiley is small and doesn't cost much memory, which makes it ideal for the internet. You see smiley's in guestbooks, e-mail, forums, websites etc. Today there're lots of different kinds of smiley's; static pictures, but also animated smiley's. (animated gif).

Static smiley's
In the beginning the smiley's were static. After the first smiley people started to make changes on this figure. First there came a not laughing smiley, later they changed colours and produced accessories. The smiley's became larger and some smiley's can hardly be recognised as a smiley. Static smiley's you can find at this page: static smiley's*. (this page loads a bit slow, because loading pictures takes time)

Animated smiley's
After the static smiley's, people started to make animations. In the beginning all smiley's were happy, but even that changed. Some smiley's got angry and yes, the smiley became also a victom of "voilence", "sex", "drugs" and "rock and roll".

There're thousands of smiley's at the internet and some organisations are asking money for it, while other people make them for free. At my website you can see a small selction of smiley's and I thinbk they all have one thing in common: They have some human characteristics and they're funny to look at.  You can see the smiley's at the following pages:
animated smiley's (angry)*
animated smiley's (happy)*
animated smiley's (relation)*
animated smiley's (other)*
(*these pages load a bit slow, because loading pictures takes some time)

Smiley and the future
What will happen in future? I think smiley will remain popular and I think in fiture we will see: a  smiley-movie (all actors are smiley's); the smiley bomb (a bomb that makes the enemy laugh);smiley sex (smile only at the thought of sex); smiley-virus (all negative words you type are changed in a smiley); smiley-diet (a diet that's so bad, you have to laugh about it.); smiley games (maybe pacman is already such a game); smiley politics (Politicions laugh about your needs); smiley-flue (you get a yelow colour with on your back two black dots and a black stripe); smiley-drug (be adicted to laughing gas) ; smiley-fashion (everything in black and yellow) etc. etc..