Emoticons in conversation messages generate invalid HTML.
FILE: administrator/components/com_easysocial/tables/conversationmessage.php
FUNCTION: getContents
SUMMARY:
parseBBCode() is called before replaceHyperlinks(), thus replaceHyperlinks() mangles the HTML tags generated by parseBBCode, including emoticons IMG tag.
I was able to work around this by changing the order (replaceHyperlinks, parseBBCode, replaceEmails), it works but has not been fully tested and may be insecure.
REPRODUCE: Create a message with an emoticon shortcut "This is a test

".
// Apply bbcode
$message = Foundry::string()->parseBBCode( $message );
// Apply e-mail replacements
$message = Foundry::string()->replaceEmails( $message );
// Apply hyperlinks
$message = Foundry::string()->replaceHyperlinks( $message );
Regards,
Kevin