Bccthis Adds Emoticons to Outlook

When you’re a small, scrappy team with more ideas than hands you have to be pretty selective about what makes it into each release (like our recent support for Gmail). That means we rely a good deal on our users to let us know what makes the cut or not.

A few days ago we were thrilled to see CNET’s 4 out of 5 star editors’ rating of our Outlook plugin and duly noted the request to “see a few more customization options for outgoing messages.” A couple of our users had also previously suggested emoticons and while they had been on our to-do list for some time, they kept getting pushed back .

After all, we were busy developing serious software tools and implementing a bunch of smiley faces seemed a bit, well, childish. But because those little happy (and sad faces) had maintained their place on our list of top 5 for so long we decided it was time to give them their day in the sun. Here’s just a few reasons why:

When I’m sending a Bccthis message I’m actually being more expressive so emoticons would help me be more so

Bccthis messages are, in general, fun (ok, they can be downright naughty too – all the more reason!)

I just want to add some color to my private messages

Outlook has no emoticons to begin with!

That last one clinched it for us. Yes, Outlook has no built in emoticons. To be fair, they do have a keystroke smiley face and frown but that’s a pretty limited set of emotions! People!! We may sometimes act like trained monkeys when we’re in the office but we’re all human (I think) and, in general, thrive on giving and receiving emotional feedback. Group hug.

So, that’s it really. With this newest update you can now display a full range of emotions in your Bccthis messages. Because sometimes not everyone needs to know how you really feel.