Similarities Between Emoticons And Emojis

1980 Words8 Pages
Emojis, A History
Emojis – the little picture messages that have worked their way into our devices, hearts, and to some extent, our speech! Where did they come from? Furthermore, how did they take over? For that matter, what even constitutes an emoji? Relatively few of us take the time consider these questions, despite their central, all encompassing role in our daily lives. The answers, as will soon be discovered, are rich and fascinating!
A tiny misnomer that needs to be clarified, before we go down the emoji rabbit hole, is that emojis are not emoticons. These two terms are often interchangeably used, but they are in fact quite different!
Emoticons VS Emojis
The distinction between emoticons and emojis is actually fairly simple to
…show more content…
Regardless of the fact that he invented the former, he believes that the latter lacks the same imagination that spurred interesting emoticons. Furthermore, he briefly noted in Smiley Lore how it’s “interesting to note that Microsoft and AOL now intercept these character strings and turn them into little pictures. Personally, I think this destroys the whimsical element of the original.”
The Father of Emoji: Shigetaka Kurita
About a decade after the birth of the emoticon, the first iteration of the emoji was created in Tokyo. Pagers were booming in popularity amongst the youth in Japan, and the mobile device company NTT Docomo decided to add a heart symbol to their Pocket Bell device. This allowed people to send a cute picture message to their friends. Pocket Bell users loved this feature. However, when NTT Docomo decided to market their devices to a more business-friendly market, they abandoned their heart emoji precursor. To say that the users were upset is an understatement. Imagine if Apple took a feature away from the iPhone, and you hated the move so much that you actually switched phones. (We lose features all the time, but we don’t all feel as strongly about it). Users actually started to leave NTT Docomo pagers, in favor of competitors that had adopted the heart symbol.
Enter Shigetaka Kurita – a man working on a revolutionary project at NTT Docomo known as i-mode. This mobile platform would prove to be nearly a decade ahead

More about Similarities Between Emoticons And Emojis

Get Access