Download Yahoo Messenger Free
100% Free Download

Smileys and emoticons are a big part of the internet culture of today's youth, who use emoticons to add indications of emotion and nuance to sentences that could otherwise be misunderstood. They use them widely in emails, MSN live messenger chat, and forum postings.

But the yellow smiley face that lies at the root of all those internet emoticons has a real history to it that few people know about.

The smiley didn't become widely popular until Bernard and Murray Spain began using it as a design for novelty items in the 1970s. The simplicity of both the image and the accompanying message gave a clear and potent reminder to busy and stressed people to keep life simple and enjoy every moment.

In 2006 Wal-mart used the icon in a popular advertising campaign and attempted to claim the copyright to the image in the USA, which caused legal friction with Harvey Ball and an unrelated company "Smiley World" which holds the copyright to the image in many countries.