I remember during the late 90s a series of books coming out that was written entirely in email transcripts between two people. The covers of each were an emoticon.
I really wasn't sure if I "got" emotions. As the years went by, emojis appeared, and I continued to be confused as to their popularity. And yet, they grew.
In the last 12 months, it finally snapped for me (yes, I'm a little slow!). An emoji can take a contextless and emotionless email (or IM or tweet) and inject it with emotion. All of a sudden something that could be perceived as annoyed, could be correctly perceived as jovial (or any other mix).
What's more, people are amazingly expressive with emojis, creating another avenue of creativity, particular shared over the web.
This is why, this year at ffconf, we have a session dedicated to the emoji.
I'm interested in its history, how its used in professional communication and possibly most importantly to me, compatibility - since not all platforms have the latest emoji characters.
Get your ticket today. It's going to be another amazing year of content.