The desire for 'bling' recently came over us. No idea why but anyway, we went with it. The result? Some cool new emoticon designs. They're actually best viewed as a wallpaper on your mobile phone because then we can make them bigger and add more detail. I thought I'd show you my favourite here...
I love the concept of Twitter although I must admit I found it a little hard to get my head around it at first. Twitter usage has exploded recently and seems to be the thing to be seen with - I didn't realise it's actually 18 months since Twitter was launched.
I was watching this short video that Matt Dickman made about it. It's great at explaining how Twitter works in a simple way. He shows some of the applications that have been developed by Twitter users to ensure you can tweet in lots of ways.
Want to know how to improve Twitter?
I wondered whether you could tweet using emoticons. Seems you can't (yet). This article on CNET shows some ways to improve Twitter and make it more personal to you. There aren't any emoticon applications on the list as yet. Coming soon? Who knows. I think emoticons sometimes make expressing emotion heaps more simple and for short tweets they could be very useful.
I've just found this great article on CNET entitled 'The Web Smiley's Motto: Grin and Bear It'. It's worth a read if you're into emoticons. It's very interesting. It explains the history of emoticons, they've actually been around for 25 years now. That's as old as me. The article questions whether they're going to enter the history books soon as the craze with avatars takes off. However, this comment makes sense to me:
'And then there's the fact that emoticons, however outdated, may have already solidified a permanent spot in Web-surfing and communication habits. "It's become almost a convention," said Fahlman of Carnegie Mellon. "The original reason may have completely evaporated, but I think these things will live on for a little bit longer until e-mail itself goes away and we're all just talking and videoing at each other and everyone's forgotten how to write."
And most of us don't foresee humanity forgetting how to write anytime soon. ;-) '
So don't worry, they'll be here a while longer and at My Emoticons we'll make sure of that. I personally think there's always a latest craze. It's like when emoticons got animated, the small static ones became unfashionable. But then I think they'll soon become popular again as 'retro' images. That's why we put all our static ones here.
Paul found this today whilst looking on one of the Yahoo Product Manager's blog.
It's very funny and a great idea. I've not seen an emoticoncert before. It uses Yahoo smilies (or emoticons if that's what you call them?). Watch it. I can think of lots of different emoticoncerts that I could create.
I had wanted to find an Asian person to talk with about emoticons and other related content in Asia. I tried to research the market myself but as my Chinese language skills are non-existent, struggled somewhat. There are heaps of social networking sites but at times I find them over facing. I always find face to face interaction 100% more satisfying.
So imagine this, I'm working from a home office for an internet based company. My resources are limited but I want to meet and talk with Asian consumers. My location, a small beach town called Noosa on the Sunshine Coast in Australia. Pace of life: slow. This is the land of the 'surfer dude'.
My brainwave was the local English language school. I went to their website and submitted a 'wanted' post on their forum. I didn't hold much hope. About a week later a get an email from an address with chinese characters. That's how I met Witty.
Witty and I met at Grub & Co (the local deli) for drinks and chat. Her English is good but I failed to understand she wanted a latte when I asked her what she wanted to drink. To me it sounded like 'nata' - a weird drink I'd not heard of or a strange way of saying 'nothing'. Eventually I got it after she said it for the forth time.
We had a great chat and it looks like we'll do some business together. As it turns out, Witty is a graphic designer and can create some images for me. So not only did I learn about icon imagery in Asia, I recruited a new designer for My Display Image.
I find it quite fascinating that I can still do business from this little beach town using the forum of the local language school. Who would have thought. It was important we met. It's funny how the wrong impression is so easily created when English isn't your first language. Short terse sentences are easiest which I find easy to interpret as slightly irritable. Witty was far from irritable. With the Taiwanese accent we needed the use of our bodies to optimize the conversation.
Smiley Central is definitely a very dominant player in the world of emoticons. Today I decided to download their software and see what has changed since I last looked.
That's when I hit a brick wall. I have a MacBook. Smiley Central and my gorgeous and very friendly little MacBook aren't compatible. It's a shame really. And it surprised me. Now I know the Mac population is much smaller than the PC population but I think that balance is starting to change. The iconic iPod seems to have changed what people think about Apple. It's an incredible turnaround for a company that was slowly disappearing. I personally can't wait to experience the iPhone - Steve Job's keynote from San Francisco is well worth watching if you've not seen it.
Anyhow, back to Smiley Central. Thank goodness I have Parallels and so can run Windows on my MacBook. Clever hey? I must admit, after being a Windows user all my life apart from the last six months, I hardly ever have a need to power up Windows - something I never thought possible.
So I downloaded Smiley Central. I was looking for 'bling' emoticons. I wasn't that impressed with what I saw. So now I'm in creative mode. Watch out for bling smileys (or emoticons) on My Emoticons.
David Taylor, the brand coach behind 'Where's the Sausage?' says it how it is on his post about 'commenting virginity'. As the conversation on this blog is all about 'expression' it would be deeply ironic if no-one commented.
As my gorgeous friend Jeanie Bergin taught me 'there's no right and wrong; there's only right and left'. It's kind of scary to say anything you like about the conversation on this blog but please do. That's the fun part. Not knowing where the conversation will go. Embrace the unknown, don't fear it.
