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The first version of this was introduced in 1982 by computer scientist Scott Fahlman.
From 1990s onwards, it became widespread in Japan through telecom providers like DoCoMo, Softbank & Sharp.
In 2010s, seeing the popularity in Japan, it was adopted by OEMs in the USA where it was standardized & is now used globally.
What am I talking about?

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Emojis.
The concept started as smileys to convey emotion through text in 1982. From there it took the form of emojis which were, over the years, standardized under the Unicode.
Read More about the history of Emoji.