Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced on 9 May that Instagram, which is part of Meta Platforms, Inc., will start testing the integration of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) on its platform starting this week.
Zuckerberg made the revelation in a video interview with Tom Bilyeu, the co-founder and host of Impact Theory — a weekly interview show in which some of the world’s most famous achievers share their knowledge and secrets behind their success.
What did Zuckerberg say about NFTs on Instagram?
Testing to involve augmented reality NFTs
“We’re starting building for NFTs not just in our metaverse and Reality Labs work, but also across our family of apps. We’re starting to test digital collectibles on Instagram so that creators and collectors can display their NFTs,” Zuckerberg told Bilyeu.
“We’re going to bring similar functionality to Facebook soon,” he said.
The Facebook founder added that his team is also working on 3D NFTs and enabling their use via the company’s AR platform.
“We’re also going to work on augmented reality NFTs, basically 3D NFTs, that you can bring to Instagram Stories using Spark AR, that’s our software AR platform,” Zuckerberg said.
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What Instagram head Adam Mosseri says
In a separate video, Instagram head Adam Mosseri said that as part of the test a small group of NFT users in the US will be able to display their tokens across feeds, messages and stories.
This, Mosseri underlined, is a learning process for Instagram and that there are some issues that need to be worked out.
“I want to acknowledge upfront that NFTs and blockchain technologies and Web3 more broadly are all about distributing trust, distributing power,” Mosseri says. “But Instagram is fundamentally a centralised platform, so there’s a tension there.”
NFTs on Instagram 🎉
This week we’re beginning to test digital collectibles with a handful of US creators and collectors who will be able to share NFTs on Instagram. There will be no fees associated with posting or sharing a digital collectible on IG.
See you next week! ✌🏼 pic.twitter.com/VuJbMVSBDr
— Adam Mosseri (@mosseri) May 9, 2022
Once the testing is over, NFT creators and collectors around the world will be able to display their artistic possessions on Instagram.
According to The Verge, Meta spokesperson Christine Pai said that NFTs minted on Ethereum and Polygon blockchains will be initially supported. This will be followed by Solana and Flow.
Instagram isn’t the first major social media company to integrate NFTs on its platform. Twitter allowed users to display their NFTs in the form of hexagon-shaped profile pictures starting January 2022.
(Main and featured image: Azamat E/@esen_aza/Unsplash)
This story first appeared on Prestige Singapore
