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> I had no idea that within a few months of completing such project, it would revolutionize our culture’s way of communicating I'm pretty sure emojis were all

> I had no idea that within a few months of completing such project, it would revolutionize our culture’s way of communicating I'm pretty sure emojis were all over the internet before apple - forums, chat apps, IMs etc? Were they the first ones to include them in the default SMS app or something?

oakesm9 9y ago
I believe they were used a lot in Japan and Apple created them initially for that market as well. They were one of the first to make them accessible in the west though.
- kuroguro 9y ago
  Hmm... I still don't see the "revolutionary" part tho.
  - madeofpalk 9y ago
    Accessibility.
- archagon 9y ago
  IIRC, for the longest time, you couldn't even get the emoji keyboard on Western devices without some sort of weird kludge.
  - rangibaby 9y ago
    Putting a magic number into the “magic number” app unlocked emoji on any iThing iirc.
koyote 9y ago
I believe you are right. In the late 90s most forum software had image emoticons as well as animated ones. The Japanese have had emojis (which is where the name comes from) on their phones since the beginning of the century. I am not sure what (if anything) Apple has to do with this.
crazygringo 9y ago
There were yellow smiley faces all over forums and chat apps, but IIRC they were just conversions of emoticons ;-) to images in proprietary ways -- they had nothing to do with the actual Japanese set of emoji. iOS was the first place I was ever exposed to real emoji (in the US), and actual desktop OS support for Unicode colored emoji in any application seemed to be a reaction to the popularity in SMS. But I'm no historian on this... anybody correct me if this is wrong? Edit: timeline from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emoji#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emoji#History > The emoji keyboard was first available [on iOS] in Japan with the release of iPhone OS version 2.2 in 2008 > The emoji keyboard was not officially made available outside of Japan until iOS version 5.0 [2011] > Apple first introduced emoji to their desktop operating system... in 2011 > Google added native emoji support to Android in July 2013 > As of Windows 8.1 Preview [2013], Segoe UI Emoji font supplies full-color pictographs.
- signal11 9y ago
  "Classic" Japanese emoji, pre-Apple[1], looked pretty crappy. Non-Japanese users had access to better-looking emoticons on ICQ, AOL, Yahoo and MSN (I particularly liked the MSN emoticons) but they were non-standard. In retrospect, iOS's decision to combine full-colour emoji with standard Unicode mappings was genius. [1] https://www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/3639 https://www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/3639
reaperducer 9y ago
Emojis emerged back in the 90's when Japan was the world leader in cell phones with cool features (now they're all about iPhone). I think they started on NTT DoCoMo phones. It's why so many of the original emoji are Japanese-centric (Mount Fuji, Japanese characters, the Japanese symbol for fax). Emoticons originated long before that. Heck, even before the internet. I know we were using them on Quantum Link before it became Q-Link, before it became AOL. I remember seeing them on Usenet and some of the networks like Bitnet back before all the networks were joined into the internet. The iPhone was the first platform I ever saw unite emojis and emoticons in one place, though now everyone just calls them "emojis."
scott_karana 9y ago
Those were "emoticons", which used plain ASCII, and were sometimes converted to proprietary icon sets within forums/IM clients/etc. So, entering :-) would render a smiley face sometimes. However, it wasn't a Unicode character that retained meaning independent of the specific implementation. Eg, :grr: might render on phpBB, but nowhere else.

oakesm9 9y ago

I believe they were used a lot in Japan and Apple created them initially for that market as well. They were one of the first to make them accessible in the west though.

kuroguro 9y ago
Hmm... I still don't see the "revolutionary" part tho.
- madeofpalk 9y ago
  Accessibility.
archagon 9y ago
IIRC, for the longest time, you couldn't even get the emoji keyboard on Western devices without some sort of weird kludge.
- rangibaby 9y ago
  Putting a magic number into the “magic number” app unlocked emoji on any iThing iirc.

koyote 9y ago

I believe you are right. In the late 90s most forum software had image emoticons as well as animated ones. The Japanese have had emojis (which is where the name comes from) on their phones since the beginning of the century. I am not sure what (if anything) Apple has to do with this.

crazygringo 9y ago

There were yellow smiley faces all over forums and chat apps, but IIRC they were just conversions of emoticons ;-) to images in proprietary ways -- they had nothing to do with the actual Japanese set of emoji. iOS was the first place I was ever exposed to real emoji (in the US), and actual desktop OS support for Unicode colored emoji in any application seemed to be a reaction to the popularity in SMS. But I'm no historian on this... anybody correct me if this is wrong? Edit: timeline from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emoji#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emoji#History > The emoji keyboard was first available [on iOS] in Japan with the release of iPhone OS version 2.2 in 2008 > The emoji keyboard was not officially made available outside of Japan until iOS version 5.0 [2011] > Apple first introduced emoji to their desktop operating system... in 2011 > Google added native emoji support to Android in July 2013 > As of Windows 8.1 Preview [2013], Segoe UI Emoji font supplies full-color pictographs.

signal11 9y ago
"Classic" Japanese emoji, pre-Apple[1], looked pretty crappy. Non-Japanese users had access to better-looking emoticons on ICQ, AOL, Yahoo and MSN (I particularly liked the MSN emoticons) but they were non-standard. In retrospect, iOS's decision to combine full-colour emoji with standard Unicode mappings was genius. [1] https://www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/3639 https://www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/3639

reaperducer 9y ago

Emojis emerged back in the 90's when Japan was the world leader in cell phones with cool features (now they're all about iPhone). I think they started on NTT DoCoMo phones. It's why so many of the original emoji are Japanese-centric (Mount Fuji, Japanese characters, the Japanese symbol for fax). Emoticons originated long before that. Heck, even before the internet. I know we were using them on Quantum Link before it became Q-Link, before it became AOL. I remember seeing them on Usenet and some of the networks like Bitnet back before all the networks were joined into the internet. The iPhone was the first platform I ever saw unite emojis and emoticons in one place, though now everyone just calls them "emojis."

scott_karana 9y ago

Those were "emoticons", which used plain ASCII, and were sometimes converted to proprietary icon sets within forums/IM clients/etc. So, entering :-) would render a smiley face sometimes. However, it wasn't a Unicode character that retained meaning independent of the specific implementation. Eg, :grr: might render on phpBB, but nowhere else.