New Jewelery Company Capitalizes On Social Networking With “smilies” For Offline Conversations

July 13, 2008 - PRLog -- Generation Y is used to communicating big thoughts in quick bursts of shorthand. From Facebook and MySpace to Twitter, IM and texting, younger people have endless ways to share and describe their thoughts and moods. Emoodicon, a design company focused on social objects, has given online smilies and emoticons a fresh spin: creating rings and t-shirts that let wearers instantly tell the people around them how they feel. “Emoodicons are like mood rings, but instead of the ring telling you how you feel, you tell the ring. You’re in charge,” says John T. Unger, designer.

The rings are made from mirror polished stainless steel with a glass face. A secret compartment within the ring holds laser cut, printed emoticons that wearers can change on the fly. Buyers can choose from robot or kitty designs for their mood icons. Each set has 25 images to represent feelings such as happy, sad, angry, in love, even embarrassed. New emoticon sets will be released periodically.

From 'tweetups' (spontaneous face to face meetings among Twitter users) to large scale blogging and social media conferences, the line between online and offline friends is disappearing. “The ease and immediacy of connections on the internet makes people a lot more open with their feelings. Emoodicon wants to bring this online openness into our offline world.” Unger says.

Emoodicon began with a conversation between friends at SXSW, an Austin tech conference often referred to as Geek Spring Break. John T. Unger is an artist whose online success has led to consulting gigs with web companies such as Six Apart and PayPal. Christopher Carfi is the CEO of Cerado, a software and consulting firm that develops online communities and social networking sites for businesses. Meeting in person after several years of email and blog conversations, they discussed ways social media could be used in the real world. The idea of a piece of jewelry that displayed a person’s current mood captivated both John and Chris.

Not only are Emoodicon's products about the social web, they would not have been possible without it. "Initially, the idea of manufacturing and distributing a product like this seemed daunting, difficult and  complicated… where do you start? But the social media tools we use every day made it easy to pull together a great team from all over the world." says Unger. He and Carfi made extensive use of the web, email, twitter, skype, online networking and digital media to design and produce their eCommerce-based product line. Unger and Carfi live on opposite ends of the US. The designer of their icons and animated video is in Toronto. The 3D modeling and fabrication plant is in Taiwan and was found using research done by a virtual assistant in Mumbai, India. Graphic design was done in Sweden and expert marketing assistance came from backwoods Ontario.

While the rings started out as something spontaneous, Emoodicon is quickly turning into a serious business. “For tweens, teens and young adults, the need to connect is very real. There’s an intimacy online that isn’t easily duplicated in the real world. Emoodicons allow people to bring some of this connection into their offline life,” Unger says.

Where to find us online:
Website: http://emoodicon.com
Print quality images: http://www.emoodicon.com/media-inquiries.html
MySpace: http://myspace.com/emoodicon
Twitter: http://twitter.com/emoodicon
YouTube: http://youtube.com/watch?v=HDmzpRTOY2k



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Emoodicon is a web-based company that creates jewelry and t-shirts which allow users to customize their look based on their mood. Plans are in place to expand their line to include other jewelry, apparel, and accessories.