When Isn’t a Smiley Appropriate?

When is it ok to use an emoticon, in this MySpace/FaceBook world? According to the New York Times… not too often. There’s a few real examples listed, one of which a woman’s business lost hundreds of thousands of dollars and was consoled with the help of a frown smiley. I agree with most of the article… like most things though, there is a right time and a wrong time for things. So it’s best you go scratch those emoticons off your resume.

In a survey of 40,000 users of the Yahoo Messenger instant-message program, 52 percent of the respondents were older than 30, and among those, 55 percent said they use emoticons every day. Nearly 40 percent of respondents said they first discovered emoticons within the last five years.

Source: NY Times via DownloadSquad