Emoticons have become almost a staple part of how we communicate with each other online.
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On the messaging side, there's an impressively large collection of emoticons (TMI-face, anybody?).
When used properly, however, a Dutch research team has shown that emoticons can effectively enhance the desired tone of a message.
The feature they actually want you to use is one that lets you include smiley or frowny emoticons in your search request.
Emoticons, which represent moods and facial expressions using a combination of punctuation marks, numbers and letters, are the darling of the texting world.
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Once thought of as superfluous, emoticons are now serious business with downloadable apps and customized, animated expressions used to convey a quick LOL or SMH.
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Launched in Asia, it caters to those who like their emoticons and stickers, but it's a solid messenger and available on iOS, Android, Windows Phone and BlackBerry.
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Devices will also receive the ability to change the home button's LED to correlate with contacts, pause and resume video recording, color emoticons and refreshed QRemote functionality.
Traced back to the 19th century, they have long been used in friendly notes and communications before digital forms of emoticons were introduced in 1982 by Scott Fahlman of Carnegie Mellon University.
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As many have said, the language trend that first started with email and later text messaging has been to use more abbreviations, and even symbols (emoticons or smiley faces) to convey ideas, emotions or context.
Not only do Google's spectacles receive curated updates from the network -- to keep you from being bombarded, of course-- but they allow users to add emoticons to a friend's post and reply with comments.
Consider the self-selecting nature of posts with emoticons ones containing smiley faces seem sure to disproportionately feature information about kitties and soccer practices, while ones containing frowns are sure to be heavy on teenage nerd girls beefing with their boyfriends.
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