Where Did Emoji
Come From?
- by EmojiChat
- Preface
- In The Beginning..
- Introduction
- 1. History
- 2. Impact
- The Emoji Story
- 1. Emoji is Codes
- 2. What is Emoji.. Really
- 3. Steve Jobs' Blesses Emoji
- ...more coming soon
Introduction
1. History
The year was 1999. Cellphone users in Japan were increasingly using picture messages as a way to communicate. Mobile phone companies notced this trend because pictures are much larger than text messages.


A single picture message can be the size of hundreds if not thousands of text messages.
Mobile operators were already struggling to support the needs of 80 million users of a rapidly growing technology.
Engineers were told to fix this problem. The solution? Emoji.
Emoji was born in a Japanese research facility.
DoKoMo i-mode, a mobile phone provider in Japan, was the first entity to allow users to add pictures of commonly used emoticons to their text messages.
Pictures? Emoji is just.. pictures?
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Emoji can be pictures. Emoji can be codes. I will get to that next.
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2. Impact




Users rejoiced at having emoticons at their fingertips. Emoji made their text 'come alive'.
Wireless network operators loved them too because DoKoMo engineers figured out a way to transfer an emoji as single character.
In a time of text messages with 140 or 60 character limits, and emoji being a single character, it could go a long way.
Continue reading to hear how Steve Jobs of Apple Inc. revolutionized emoji, literally taking down the emoji berlin wall.
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The Emoji Story
1. Emoji Is Codes
Emoji is the Japanese term for picture characters. These "picture characters" are standardized and built into [most Japanese] handsets.
Wikipedia: Emoji
Therefore, Emoji can roughly be translated to standardized icons with a meaning. The key word here is standardized. What makes Emoji special is that it was developed by scientists.
What is the biggest difference between emoji and emoticons?
- Emoji
- Codes meant to be read and transferred by computers then decoded into Pre-Defined images users can see. They are limited in number.
- Emoticons
- They are user created images from text so the possible combinations is infinite.
2. What is Emoji.. Really
Emoji is used a lot like the way emoticons are used now.
Wait, aren't emoticons the same as emoji?
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They can be used in the same ways but they are vastly different.
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Emoticon
vs.
Emoji
Portmanteau word or compound word for emotion + icon, it is a group of characters used to represent an emotion.
- What are they?
Japanese for "picture word". Emoji are often pictographs—images of things such as faces, weather, emotions or activities.(絵文字)They're all the little smiley faces!$# :) :( :D D:
- What are they..
- in human terms?
A set of predefined pictures with meanings that a smartphone user can choose to include in their text and email message because they were pre-programmed on the phone.That wasn't human terms, and, you answered the emoticon question like a 13 year old girl. Those answers don't even belong in the same category.
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That's what I'm saying!!! Let me explain
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I learn better by example, just sayin.
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Emoticon
vs.
Emoji
\(^o^)/
(^-^)/
- Examples.
Scott Fahlman used the first emoticon ":-)" on Sep. 9, 1982.
- Who invented it?
First introduced in DoCoMo i-mode but since integrated into the mail and web services of all mobile carriers in Japan.
Please Continue to the next page.
Emojichat.