The digital evolution of the Smiley began around the same time in the late 1990s, when the smiley first started to be incorporated into emoticon designs. Many people lay claims on when this began and who started it, but phone company Alcatel first included a digital smiley as a welcome screen in 1996. However, the first major development was the use of "toolbars" where users of various messaging applications (such as MSN messenger) could send emoticons or smileys for the first time on its messaging platform. The launch date is often hard to pinpoint, but it was likely on MSN Messenger 6 or 7 when it became an official toolbar, circa 2005. Prior to this, unofficial toolbars had been used by millions of users to use digital smileys to convey or communicate emotion. One of the major toolbars was SmileyWorld's toolbar, a usable plugin developed by Nicolas Loufrani from his original Smiley Dictionary, with GIFs dating back even further on the site. By 2003, the SmileyWorld toolbar had 887 original smiley icons. In the 1990s and 2000s, emoticons, smileys and later emojis were often interchangeable, but were used to describe pictograms used for digital communication.
The digital evolution of the Smiley began around the same time in the late 1990s, when the smiley first started to be incorporated into emoticon designs. Many people lay claims on when this began and who started it, but phone company Alcatel first included a digital smiley as a welcome screen in 1996. However, the first major development was the use of "toolbars" where users of various messaging applications (such as MSN messenger) could send emoticons or smileys for the first time on its messaging platform. The launch date is often hard to pinpoint, but it was likely on MSN Messenger 6 or 7 when it became an official toolbar, circa 2005. Prior to this, unofficial toolbars had been used by millions of users to use digital smileys to convey or communicate emotion. One of the major toolbars was SmileyWorld's toolbar, a usable plugin developed by Nicolas Loufrani from his original Smiley Dictionary, with GIFs dating back even further on the site. By 2003, the SmileyWorld toolbar had 887 original smiley icons. In the 1990s and 2000s, emoticons, smileys and later emojis were often interchangeable, but were used to describe pictograms used for digital communication.