Update: As Michael Kupietƺ, this guy I know from Facebook, accurately clarifies, it's specifically the ASCII emoticon that is 30-years-old."There have been typographic emoticons for a lot longer ...

'Smiley' emoticon still turning heads after 25 years Twenty-five years ago, Carnegie Mellon University professor Scott E. Fahlman says, he was the first to use three keystrokes as a horizontal ...

The smiley emoticon consists of three simple punctuation marks: the colon, the minus sign and the right parenthesis. Grafik: Visuals.