Mark Zuckerberg said Instagram NFT features are coming in the next months. According to Engadget and The Daily Beast, Mark Zuckerberg said that Meta would include NFTs on Instagram. While he didn’t offer specifics, he stated during a talk at South By Southwest “over the next several months, the ability to bring some of your NFTs in, hopefully over time be able to mint things within that environment.”
There have been rumors that this was on the way. Last year, Instagram’s head of product Adam Mosseri revealed the team was “actively looking into NFTs,” although no actual announcements were made. In January, we heard a report claiming that Facebook and Instagram teams were working on NFT integrations. The article said there has been progress on features that allow you to utilize an NFT as a profile and mint tokens on the platform, as well as discussions about establishing a marketplace.
📢 @instagram'ın CEO'su Adam Mosseri(@mosseri), #NFT trendini aktif olarak araştırdıklarını ifade etti.
👨👩👦👦 NFT'leri daha geniş kitlelere nasıl erişilebilir kılabilecekleri üzerinde düşündüklerini ve yer alabilecekleri ilgi çekici bir alan olduğunu aktardı.#instagram #NFTs pic.twitter.com/ISFttj9cRz
— Newgate Türkiye 🇹🇷 (@NewgateTR) December 18, 2021
That said, it’s clear that the company is focusing on creating an easy-to-use interface for blockchain users. The fact that NFTs are being discussed at all gives us some confidence in the long-term viability of these assets. You could sell a popular post as an NFT, perhaps? Or how about minting NFTs that act as passes to allow individuals to see certain stories? While it remains unclear whether or not minting capabilities will be added until later, Facebook’s founder did confirm that a marketplace is in the works. Although the concept for a marketplace was mentioned, according to Zuckerberg, it didn’t receive a direct reference.
There’s also a metaverse aspect to all of this. Zuckerberg has been quoted as saying that you may mint your avatar’s clothes as an NFT and transport “it between your various locations,” according to the press release. Before, Zuckerberg mentioned NFTs and the metaverse in relation to world governance; he suggested they could be part of it. Now, it appears like he’s considering them as digital objects, which was first mentioned by Meta.
Instagram NFT features are coming: Everyone wants a piece of NFTs
He clarified that “a lot of technical issues” need to be resolved before the transition will be “really seamless.” For one thing, Meta would have to ensure that the items worked well on different platforms, which isn’t simple. It’ll also have to (which does appear like a minor technological obstacle), build a metaverse for it to happen in (which does seem strange).
Instagram won’t be the first major social network to incorporate NFTs. This past January, Twitter introduced a function that allowed select users to choose an NFT as their profile picture. They then appear as hexagons and may be viewed by anybody interested via a click through to see the NFT’s data. Given how frequently TikTok copies Instagram in terms of appearance, it wouldn’t be surprising if Meta’s photo-sharing (er, “entertainment”) app did something similar.
