The Somewhat Secret History of Emojis

A CompuServe marketer from the ’80s recalls the birth of emojis and avatars

Photos courtesy of the author.

Whenever I reach for an emoji as a shorthand for adding emotional effect to an online message nowadays, I’m reminded of a baby step that the phenomenon took back in 1985. This was well before AOL combined CD-ROMs and a virtual private network to bring interactive multimedia…