Mansfield, OH -- (SBWIRE) -- 12/16/2014 -- Chat and text could never be as interesting and engaging as it is without this pictorial representation of facial expression, called emoticons, that manage to cope and fill in certain 'nuances and subtleties', as Sociology professor Ben Agger at the University of Texas has mentioned, that many people are lacking in a face-to-face or voice-to-voice communication. As if, emoticons were created to make up for such estrangement.

The use of emoticons as a tool in expressing oneself beyond words began with an awkward moment online in the early 1980s. A computer scientist communicating with others in a forum sensed that words are failing him. He found it difficult to convey messages/post that is meant to be taken as a joke and so he strung together a colon, a dash and a bracket to make what is now known as the 'smiley face'.

The strong influence of emoticon on written communication became the foundation of many to create more emoticons that would complement everyone's mood. Even in various social media, particularly Facebook, emoticons are widely used in expressing how they feel. They link writing from emotion that helps prevent any misunderstandings that can be gained from plain texts. A variety of emoticons were introduced, from the basic facial expressions to numerous nation flags.

A lot of advantages of using emoticons were identified such as;

- Negative feedback delivered were being accepted (as long as the feedback is specific).
- Students are more willing to participate in class activities when emoticons were utilized in online discussions
- Help identify a person online (according to a study, women highly use emoticons on the conversations than men)
- Provokes brain activity the same as when people look at a human face.

However, the viral use of emoticons on conversations, specifically in Skype, has made several users to get enraged after Microsoft, (bought Skype in 2011 to replace the Windows Live Messenger), deliberately removed and banned certain emoticons that seems to be offensive, such as an icon containing a face and a middle finger, the angry face, a pair of woman's leg, and the 'fubar' icon. Yet, many Skype users have noted that certain emoticons in the list are far more offensive than the banned ones, which are the vomiting, mooning and smoking.

Microsoft believes that having these banned emoticons to be used in conversations is somehow rude and totally inappropriate. The community manager on the Skype sees these short codes that were removed from the product updates are 'having the potential to offend some users'. On the other hand, people who approve the use of the banned emoticons have said that those icons are the fun way to express their selves to their friends and colleague. Moreover, people are not forced to talk to anyone who uses languages that they don't like.

Though certain emoticons were banned from being used, secret Skype emoticons are still rampant and visible on other websites. Some offered free download of it while few provides the short codes to be typed or pasted in the comment or chat boxes. Thus, many still use such emoticons to express their selves in an uncontrolled environment.

About Secret-Emoticons.com
Each Skype emoticon is represented by a code or a specific word in the brackets. To apply these Skype smileys, we just copy code and paste it at Skype chat. Secret-Emoticons.com offers a wide variety of emoticons where we can just click on these emoticons to copy the code.