thisistheverge: How emoji conquered the world The story of the smiley face from the man who invented it In 1995, sales of pagers were booming among Japan’s teenagers, and NTT Docomo’s decision to add the heart symbol to its Pocket Bell devices let high school kids across the country inject a new level of sentiment (and cuteness) into the millions of messages they were keying into telephones every day. Docomo was thriving, with a bona fide must-have gadget on its hands and market share in the neighborhood of 40 percent. But when new versions of the Pocket Bell abandoned the heart symbol in favor of more business-friendly features like kanji and Latin alphabet support, the teenagers that made up Docomo’s core customer base had no problem leaving for upstart competitor Tokyo Telemessage. By the time Docomo realized it had misjudged the demand for business-focused pagers, it was badly in need of a new killer app. What it came up with was emoji. I don’t think I’ve ever used emoji in my life, and clearly I’ve been missing out.
Pop-upView Separately

thisistheverge:

How emoji conquered the world

The story of the smiley face from the man who invented it

In 1995, sales of pagers were booming among Japan’s teenagers, and NTT Docomo’s decision to add the heart symbol to its Pocket Bell devices let high school kids across the country inject a new level of sentiment (and cuteness) into the millions of messages they were keying into telephones every day. Docomo was thriving, with a bona fide must-have gadget on its hands and market share in the neighborhood of 40 percent. But when new versions of the Pocket Bell abandoned the heart symbol in favor of more business-friendly features like kanji and Latin alphabet support, the teenagers that made up Docomo’s core customer base had no problem leaving for upstart competitor Tokyo Telemessage. By the time Docomo realized it had misjudged the demand for business-focused pagers, it was badly in need of a new killer app. What it came up with was emoji.

I don’t think I’ve ever used emoji in my life, and clearly I’ve been missing out.

57 Notes/ Hide

  1. japanesepics reblogged this from davidpierce
  2. thybearohares reblogged this from vulcanhearing
  3. vulcanhearing reblogged this from thisistheverge
  4. thealexlai reblogged this from thisistheverge
  5. assassmentprone reblogged this from thisistheverge and added:
    I
  6. 01100011011011110110010001100101 reblogged this from thisistheverge
  7. tjpytheas reblogged this from thisistheverge
  8. onlythebestclw reblogged this from thisistheverge and added:
    Amazing
  9. chxrlyglez reblogged this from thisistheverge
  10. quantumeagle reblogged this from thisistheverge
  11. paleymediacouncil reblogged this from thisistheverge
  12. rhprocter reblogged this from thisistheverge
  13. noobalicious11 reblogged this from thisistheverge and added:
    They are taking over! O.o
  14. shufan reblogged this from thisistheverge
  15. davidpierce reblogged this from thisistheverge and added:
    I don’t think I’ve ever used emoji in my life, and clearly I’ve been missing out.
  16. antoniobarbudo reblogged this from thisistheverge