Lyte Byte

Its been 25 years since the inception of that first emoticon . Emoticons are nothing but the icons which expresses the emotions! They are useful when words are good enough! The first smiley emoticon is first invented by Professor Scott Fahlman of Carnegie Mellon University, which he started as an attempted humor among the computer researcher. Scott talks more about his smiley invention at Smiley Lore.

There are some smileys which are used quite often but there are a whole list of emoticons and smiley which are noted for expressing the emotions in the right and correct manner.

These are the list of emoticons that are allowed in popular messengers:

Yahoo Messenger
Yahoo Messenger is one of the earliest messenger service and they are also among the first to integrate smiley in IM.
Check out the collection of emoticons from Yahoo Messenger and also the hidden emoticons of Yahoo Messenger.

The best of the uncommon emoticon from Yahoo Messenger is [-O< praying

MSN Messenger
You can check out the MSN collection of emoticons here.

The best of the uncommon emoticon from MSN Messenger is 8-| Nerd

GMail and GTalk
There aren’t too many emoticons created by Google in GTalk or GMail
But if you are using Firefox, you can use the plugin, GTalk Emoticons to extend the collection of GTalk emoticons.

AIM Messenger
The AIM Messenger collection of emoticons and the best is the innocent smiley , it’s just too innocent.

Yahoo’s EmotiContest
On the note of 25th anniversary of emoticon, Yahoo has announced EmotiContest. They are just about to increase the whole list of emoticons in Yahoo Messenger. All you have to do is take a picture of you with unique expressions and send it to them, which goes for voting and if it goes to the final round they will create a new emoticon based on your expression. These new emoticons will be added later this year to the collection of Yahoo Emoticons.