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NFTs are now available on Instagram

Instagram is now officially testing NFTs by enabling non-fungible token creators and collectors to display their tokens on the famous social media platform.

The new feature was introduced by Instagram head Adam Mosseri, while Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg also confirmed that the company is testing NFTs and according to him a “similar functionality” is coming soon to Facebook as well.

As Mosseri pointed out, in this phase, a group of US NFT creators and collectors will have the ability to display their tokens on their stories, feeds, and messages.

“The creator economy is incredibly important to Instagram. Creators are incredibly important to Instagram. But one of the challenging things that we need to solve as an industry is how to help creators make a living doing what they love. Right now, there are several different ways for creators to make money, but a lot of them are unpredictable and changing rapidly” Mosseri said. “Now, we think the one interesting opportunity for a subset of creators is NFTs. The idea of owning a unique digital item. So, what we are starting with this week is the ability for creators and people to share NFTs that they have made or that they have bought, either in Feed or in Stories or in messaging”.

Nfts Instagram

More features soon

Instagram is about to invest more in NFTs and during this testing process, the platform wants to collect users’ feedback to improve its interface and also to build more features and digital tools.

“It is a limited number of people start, and there is a lot more functionality that we are going to need to build over time, but we wanted to start small and learn from the community. Now, I want to acknowledge upfront that NFTs and blockchain technology, and Web3 more broadly, are all about distributing trust, distributing power” Mosseri noted and he also underlined that “Instagram is fundamentally a centralized platform, so there is a tension there. So, one of the reasons why we are starting small is we want to make sure that we can learn from the community. We want to make sure that we work out how to embrace those tenets of distributed trust and distributed power, despite the fact that we are a centralized platform”.

As the Instagram head pointed out, “we do think one of the unique opportunities we have is to make Web3 technology accessible to a much broader range of people. And NFTs specifically we think will be interesting not only to creators who create NFT art but also to people who want to collect it”.

NFTs to Facebook

Instagram isn’t the first social media platform that jumps on NFTs. Back in January, Twitter introduced NFTs by enabling users to display their tokens as hexagon-shaped profile pictures. As Zuckerberg announced, NFTs will soon be available to Facebook as well, as they are part of Meta’s plan for its Metaverse.

“This week we’re starting to test digital collectibles on Instagram so creators and collectors can display their NFTs on their profiles. Similar functionality is coming to Facebook soon, along with augmented reality NFTs on Instagram Stories via Spark AR so you can place digital art into physical spaces,” said Meta CEO. Both Mosseri and Zuckerberg emphasized that Meta aims at introducing NFTs technology to a broader range of people and that the company is about to invest more in Web3 and the process of developing the internet of the future.

George Mavridis is a freelance journalist and writer based in Greece. His work primarily covers tech, innovation, social media, digital communication, and politics. He graduated from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki with a BA in Journalism and Mass Communication. Also, he holds an MA in Media and Communication Studies from the Malmö University of Sweden and an MA in Digital Humanities from the Linnaeus University of Sweden.