The 30 year old

CEBU, Philippines - With the known limits of text-driven conversations and communiqués, emoticons have proven themselves to be effective in expressing emotions in text-based environments.

Found and used in countless online social network threads, chatroom discussions, text messages and emails, the :-) celebrated its 30th birthday last week, with the first electronic use of the :-) recorded to have happened way back in September 19, 1982.

Back in the early 80s, Carnegie Mellon University's Computer Science circle had been heavily making use of a network bulletin board, one which closely resembles the dynamics and base principles of forums or newsgroups now readily found online.

As an electronic bulletin board, it became the venue where faculty members, students and personnel could "talk" about anything, from serious topics to topics which fell along the lines of lighthearted humorous discussions.

With a number of misunderstandings following jokes in the bulletin board, a computer scientist at Carnegie Mellon named Scott E. Fahlman proposed a "standardization" when jokes were being raised, initiating the use of emoticons.

The proposal went along the lines of ending a joke with a :-), and ending a statement with a :-( for serious non-joke topics. The idea was well received and caught on, leading to the creation of different :-) variants with corresponding expressions and sentiments.

Though Fahlman is ascribed to be the inventor of the smiley emoticon, Fahlman himself is known to have said that he didn't exactly "invent" it, but did cause the spark which led to the rise of its popular use.

With a known variant of the :-) appearing in a 1967 article featured in Reader's Digest, the working concept behind the :-) is reported to date back to the 1960's, to a time when the internet as we know it today was not yet born.

However, in terms of its electronic current-standard-use, September 19, 1982 is pegged to be the date when the first smiley emoticon came to be, a date which marks the smiley emoticon's 30th birthday in conveying emotions and sentiments in online conversations and discussions.  (FREEMAN)