I am not a fan of emoticon. But, I am fine if I see smilies used in websites, blogs, or discussion forums. Nowadays, smilies/emoticons are widely used by many web applications, etc; and I have to confest that I do not know each of them, do you?
Okey, what’s emoticon anyway? According to Wikipedia:

an emoticon is a symbol or combination of symbols used to convey emotional content in written or message form.

To be more spesific, current web applications have a built-in emoticon feature. For example, if you’re using WordPress, we can manage how smilies should be presented: only symbols or converted them into graphics/icons. There are some reasons why I do not use emoticons in this site.

• I do not want to display text, images and any other important message and I presented many icons at the same time.
• Smiley symbols are enough to represent emotional content.
• I do not want to give symbols that’s hard to understand. Okey, I think it’s more about me who does not know much about smiley symbols.

This is — of course — more about my personal preferences. I am fine with emoticons at other sites/blogs. But, if there is an option not to use the icons, I will choose not to see that. For example, if we registered at a discussion forum, we can have options on how smiley symbols should be treated.