Free Smilies - How You Can Use Free Smilies to Life Spirits Worldwide

Would you like to know how you can get free smilies for your own personal use? There are loads of great places to use free smilies--on your blog, your MySpace profile, Facebook or your personal website.

You might even want to stick a few smilies around on your computer desktop or other programs you use at home.

How have free smilies evolved over time? The original smiley face appeared in the offices of State Mutual Life Assurance, a Massachusetts insurance company. The firm was enduring a difficult merger in 1963, and the bright, yellow buttons with a simple, iconic smiling face were distributed among employees to lift their spirits and remind them to spread good cheer.

During the 1970s, the smiley face experienced a surprising boom in popularity. The familiar yellow circle was wedded with the phrase "Have a Happy Day" and began appearing on an incredible array of clothing and merchandise. Historical records indicate that over 50 million smilies were made between 1970 and 1972.

In the early 1980s, electronic communication began to bloom in the early days of the Internet. In mid-September of 1982, Scott Fahlman added a text representation of a smiley face to the end of a message. These smiley symbols began to achieve wide popularity because they suddenly made it possible to add emotional cues to text-only messages.

As computers became more powerful, software became more graphical in nature. Windows 3.1 introduced a huge number of computer users to the graphical user interface, and smilies were there. At the same time, the Internet began to expand and get faster. Before long, it became possible to add actual graphic smilies to messages and other forms of communication.

In recent years, it seems that free smilies have experienced a huge spurt in evolution. Smilies have grown beyond their simple yellow beginnings. Smiley faces have gone three-dimensional and started to talk. Talking smilies interact with you and with each other. Free smilies are even available in themed designs for various holidays.

One source of free smilies on the Internet is SmileyWorld.com. This site claims to be the "official" smiley site and is connected to Franklin Loufrani, a French entrepreneur who has competing claims to the title of "smiley face creator." Loufrani began using yellow smiley faces on newspaper stories in 1971, and has trademarked the symbol in more than 100 countries (but not in the United States).

Many lovers of free smilies opt for the Smiley Central toolbar. This freely downloadable software provides a fun and easy way to add free smilies to your digital life. Although there have been concerns about the safety of similar software, this particular toolbar appears to be free of spyware. It does use cookies (small files stored on your computer) to track usage and sometimes it can affect the performance of older, slower computers.

As the web becomes more interactive and user friendly, there will be continuing growth in the demand for cute graphic additions like free smilies. A good way to find some free smilies of your own is to simply enter the phrase "free smilies" in your favorite search engine. Then you can download the ones you like best and start spreading some good cheer of your own.