Social media giant Instagram starting this week, will allow a handful of American creators and collectors to share NFTs on Instagram, Adam Mosseri revealed.
This is coming after Mark Zuckerger, the boss of the Meta group (ex-Facebook), Instagram’s parent company, indicated that his company planned to introduce NFTs to Instagram “in the short term”. We now know more.
Adam Mosseri, the boss of social media giant Instagram, has just announced on Twitter that starting this week, “a handful of American creators and collectors will be able to share NFTs on Instagram”. Users will be able to share their NFT both on their Instagram feed, their stories or their messaging system.
“The creator economy is incredibly important to Instagram,” he said. A small community will first be able to test this new feature before it is opened in a “wider” way, explains Adam Mosseri.
Before, the latter wishes to take the temperature of this universe, and in particular “to learn from the community”.
The CoinDesk media had first revealed Instagram’s projects in NFTs on Sunday. According to CoinDesk, Instagram is expected to support NFTs from four blockchains: ethereum, polygon, solana, and flow. “It is not known if Instagram will offer all of these blockchains when this feature is launched,” said CoinDesk. This information has not been confirmed by the boss of Instagram on Twitter. We will probably know more this week.
A free feature
As a reminder, an NFT (“Non Fungible Token” or non-fungible token) is a digital title of ownership, issued by a blockchain (mainly ethereum), and associated with a digital asset (photo, video, etc.). Each NFT is unique and cannot be reproduced.
NFTs are used in art, the luxury sector or for trading cards in sports.
But unlike Twitter, which has been charging its users to put their NFT on their profile picture since January, Instagram has chosen to make this feature free. “There will be no fees associated with posting or sharing an NFT on Instagram,” Adam Mosseri confirmed. With more than a billion monthly active users,
Instagram could give a new twist to the NFT phenomenon, which is losing momentum in 2022.
Will Instagram succeed in this universe related to cryptocurrencies? It would in any case be the first concrete step of the Meta group in the crypto sector.
In 2019, Marc Zuckerbeg announced his intention to launch his own cryptocurrency Libra, which was later renamed Diem. But faced with pressure from regulators, Meta had finally shelved its project in early February. The group now seems focused on another longer-term prospect: the metaverse.