In a conversation in SXSW, Mark Zuckerberg announced that his company plans to introduce NFT on Instagram in the “short term”. While Meta's CEO and founder didn't offer many details, he characterized the integration of non-fungible tokens into the company's photo- and video-sharing app as something on the way once the Instagram team irons out some of the technical challenges. .
“We are working to bring NFT to Instagram in the short term," Zuckerberg said in a conversation with Daymond John from Shark Tank. "I'm not ready to announce exactly what it will be, but in the coming months, the ability to incorporate some of its NFT and hopefully eventually being able to mint things within that environment.”
In December, Instagram head Adam Mosseri confirmed that the company was "actively exploring" NFT with the aim of bringing technology to a wider audience. "I think it's an interesting place for us to play and also to help creators," Mosseri said in an Instagram story.
Those plans were already in the works: Last summer, Instagram organized the "Creator's Week" an invitation-only virtual summit that the company characterized as a "private event for creators of NFT" in the invitations.
Instagram's interest in NFT it fits in with parent company Meta's broader vision of a lucrative interconnected virtual world filled with digital goods. “I hope that the clothes your avatar wears in the Metaverse can be coined as NFT and you can take it to different places,” Zuckerberg said.
Although the plans NFT of the company are not a big news for anyone who has been following the aspirations of Meta, the integration could be too much for some creators with certain aversion to technology.
Twitter enabled profile pictures NFT for premium users earlier this year, an integration that falls short of what Meta is hinting at, but between Jack Dorsey's crypto hype and the community NFT of the platform, the non-expendable features could be more at home than on Instagram.
There is also the matter that Meta's product history in the cryptoverse is spotty thus far, to say the least. Facing headwinds from central banks and regulators, the company scaled back grand plans for its own cryptocurrency until they bore little resemblance to its initial claims of an industry-shaking innovation.
