Following his company’s failed attempt at developing a cryptocurrency, Mark Zuckerberg made the announcement during SXSW.
Meta will be introducing NFTs to Instagram in the “near term.”
The massive tech company’s CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg dropped the unexpected announcement during a conversation at SXSW. Since Meta rebranded last fall to reflect its focus on metaverse experiences, it’s slowly been inching toward more moves like this. In December, Instagram’s leaderAdam Mosseri said the company was actively exploring NFTs to expand the tech to more audiences and help creators.
“We are working on bringing NFTs to Instagram in the near term,” Zuckerberg told Shark Tank’s Daymond John during their SXSW panel. “I’m not ready to announce exactly what that’s going to be today, but, over the next several months, the ability to bring some of your NFTs in and hopefully over time, be able to mint things within that environment.”
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The Instagram team is working through the technical challenges of integrating NFTs on the platform. Zuckerberg didn’t offer up too many details outside of that, and it’s not clear what NFTs on the platform would look like, but Zuckerberg shared a bit of his vision for what the addition could be for the platform.
“I would hope that the clothing that your avatar is wearing in the metaverse can be basically minted as an NFT, and you can take it between your different places,” Zuckerberg said. “There’s like a bunch of technical things that need to get worked out before that’ll really be seamless to happen.”
Boardroom previously reported on Meta’s sports, VR, and metaverse plans.
The technical challenges tidbit here is interesting, especially since Meta already has a failed cryptocurrency project under its belt.
Remember when Facebook was working on launching its own digital currency for nearly three years? Well, that project tanked, and the company sold its assets after facing backlash from central banks and regulators.
Either way, we’ll watch how Instagram brings NFTs on its platform and see how it can go up against Twitter, which enabled NFT profile pictures for premium users back in January.
It is also worth watching that Russia banned Meta as promised, knocking out access to more than 80 million users in the country. The move came after social platforms have called on users in Russia to call out and share the violence surrounding them. Facebook and Twitter are also currently banned in Russia.
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