What’s a “smiley” you ask? Have you ever typed the following key combination to lighten the mood of an email or IM conversation, “:-)”? Well I have. I usually shorten it to just the colon and end parens. Sometimes its the only way to let someone know that you mean well in a text conversation. Every now and then I’ll a do a “;)” which is considered a wink. Without such antics, text can be so lifeless.

You may have heard the term emoticon which is a mashup of the words emotive icon. I actually haven’t done my etymological research on that to verify, but that’s what I think it should be . This term refers directly to and is synonymous with what we have known to be called the “smiley”. It turns out that this week marks the 25th anniversary of the first use of the smiley which was apparently born on a listserv at Carnegie Mellon by research professor Scott Fahlman. In following up on that blessed event, I was recently contacted by Josie Roberts a reporter for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review to help prognosticate on the future of the smiley. For more on that conversation, be sure and check out the Trib article yourself.

Chances are that if you are reading this article you already know how to create your own smiley using AIM. But not all of us can be so fortunately saavy. To see how you can create one, refer to the image attached to this article and look for it in the font bar of your IM conversation within AIM. Just click the little smiley face to reveal.

While we here at AIM think the 25th anniversary of the smiley is an important event, not everyone else is as impressed as witnessed by this line of the article:

“Freshman Paul Richardson, 18, of Louisiana, was more excited about International Talk Like a Pirate Day, which shares Smiley’s birthday.”

What are your thoughts on the future of emoticons and smileys? Leave a comment and let us know. Yar!

-Tom aka “Harpoon Harry The Horrible”

This article was originally posted on http://design.aim.com

We’re looking for a good Interactive Media Designer to join the AIM Product Design Team. If you or someone you know might be interested, please contact me. Here’s more info on the position:

Interactive media designer will be responsible for rapidly designing, prototyping and engineering innovative applications for the AIM brand.

Job Responsibilities

Work with small team of passionate and creative engineers and designers to prototype next-generation software and applets for the AIM organization.

Design and implement novel visual design solutions to desktop and web application interface problems.

Push internal toolkit and platform technologies in relevant and trend setting directions. Identify areas where the AIM/AOL platform can be improved and communicate ways of improving the platform leads.

Skills Required

Qualified candidates must have at least 2-3 years experience with interactive media design and possess the following characteristics:

Extremely disciplined, meticulous, and wildly creative.