Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta Platforms Inc (NASDAQ:FB), revealed during a South By Southwest session that the internet giant and Instagram owner would bring non-fungible tokens (NFT) to the image and video sharing platform.
NFT Integration
As reported by The Verge and Engadget, Zuckerberg announced that Instagram would offer NFTs and added, “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.”
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The news had been brewing since last year when Instagram lead Adam Mosseri revealed that his team was “actively exploring NFTs,” and in January reports asserted that Meta —via Facebook and Instagram teams— was developing NFT integrations.
“The report mentioned that there was progress on features to let you use an NFT as a profile and mint NFTs on the platform and discussions around creating a marketplace,” The Verge reports.
Despite Zuckerberg’s announcement, there is very little information as to how to mint an NFT on Instagram —whether it will involve using an NFT as a profile or selling a post as one.
A Technical Challenge
As previous statements by Zuckerberg suggest, Meta is also lining up an NFT offer within the company’s most ambitious project, the metaverse. He even went on to say that avatars’ clothing could be minted as non-fungible tokens.
“A bunch of technical things that need to get worked out before that'll really be seamless to happen,” he said.
Once the metaverse comes to fruition, all comprising elements should articulate on different platforms —an absolute challenge from a technological perspective.
Instagram is not the first social media platform that integrates NFTs, as Twitter debuted a function that allows for the use of an NFT as a profile picture. Anyone who would want to attest to the file’s ownership.
Meta is part of the Entrepreneur Index, which tracks 60 of the largest publicly traded companies managed by their founders or their founders' families.
