Background - Social Media Emoticons

Background

A Brief History - 

In 1999 the Japanese mobile phone company NTT DOCOMO released a set of 176 emoji for mobile phones and pagers. Designed on a twelve-by-twelve-pixel grid, the emoji—a portmanteau of the Japanese words e, or “picture,” and moji, or “character”—enhanced the visual interface for NTT DOCOMO’s devices and facilitated the nascent practice of text messaging and mobile email. Drawing on sources as varied as Japanese graphic novels, the typeface Zapf Dingbats, and common emoticons (simple faces that computer users made out of preexisting punctuation marks), Kurita, a designer at NTT DOCOMO, included illustrations of weather phenomena, pictograms like the heart symbol, and a range of facial expressions.

The shift toward concise, telegraphic correspondence that began with the advent of email in the 1970s accelerated dramatically when messaging moved to mobile devices. People had even less space and time to get their point across, and the conveyance of tone and emotion became both more difficult and more urgent. Emoji, when combined with text, allow for more nuanced intonation. Filling in for body language, they reassert the human within the deeply impersonal, abstract space of electronic communication. Now, with more than 2,600 in use, emoji have evolved far beyond NTT DOCOMO’s original set into an essential, global, and increasingly complex companion to written language. Nonetheless, the DNA for today’s emoji is clearly present in Kurita’s humble pixelated designs.

Stickers Gain Popularity

In the past several years, stickers have become a ubiquitous means of communication. On Facebook Messenger alone, users send more than 380 million stickers each day. More interestingly, when compared to GIFs, users on Messenger send stickers 16 times more than GIFs (380 million stickers versus 22 million GIFs per day). That’s powerful.

The Evolution of Communication and Why Stickers Matter

Stickers are not reserved for the millennial generation or up-and-coming Gen Zers, but these generations are often credited for starting this visual communication trend. You don’t have to be young to communicate well, though. A survey by Harris Poll revealed that 36% of people ages 18 to 34 who use stickers, GIFs, and emojis find that their thoughts and feelings are communicated better through images than words.

Since generations cross over when communicating, the use of visual representations for thoughts and feelings has grown. People of all ages are finding that images can sometimes paint a much clearer picture than words. They may allow some people to communicate better with their mother or father, regardless of the age difference.