🎉 NFTs are now on IG
After much speculation, NFTs are finally coming to Instagram this week.
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The Big Story
TikTok has really pushed social media platforms to find new, innovative ways of connecting with the culture. Not just in terms of optimizing product offerings but finding unique approaches to retaining creators integral to their platform’s success. And as blockchain technologies continue to gain mainstream attention, things are just getting started.
In a video tweet, Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri said that the social media platform will start testing NFTs this week with a few select creators and collectors in the US. These users will be able to post NFTs on their feed, stories, or in messages for free by linking their third-party digital wallets in-app.
The video showcases NFTs displayed with the tag "digital collectible," similar to how user profiles get tagged in a photo. Upon clicking it, users can see a brief description of the project and the names of the owner and creator. These NFTs will carry a "shimmer" effect to distinguish them from standard images shared on the platform.
Mosseri said that Instagram hopes to bring more functionalities in the future but is starting small as the platform wants to learn from the community. And before anyone could bring up the irony of hosting a decentralized technology on a centralized platform, Mosseri admitted it himself.
“I want to acknowledge upfront that NFTs and blockchain technologies are all about distributing trust and distributing power. But Instagram is fundamentally a centralized platform, so there’s a tension there," he said.
Only Ethereum and Polygon blockchains are supported at launch, with Solana and Flow coming soon. Compatible third-party wallets include MetaMask, Rainbow, and TrustWallet, with support for Coinbase Wallet, Dapper Wallet and Phantom arriving shortly.
The announcement isn’t surprising as Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg hinted at it during the SXSW Conference in March, saying that the company will introduce NFTs into Instagram in the “near term.”
But today, in conversation with YouTuber Tom Bilyeu, Zuckerberg said he plans to roll out similar functionalities to Facebook soon. But he didn't stop there.
“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.
Since its rebranding last year, Meta is counting on the long-term success of the metaverse. Recently, the company reported a $2.9 billion loss in Q1 for its metaverse division, Reality Labs. Despite this setback, Zuckerberg believes that these investments are laying a solid groundwork for the "exciting 2030s" when Meta will be better positioned than any company at monetising the metaverse economy.
That said, Instagram and Meta aren't the only ones embracing NFTs.
Back in January, Twitter introduced an NFT profile picture to its premium Twitter Blue service, available only for iOS users. The feature was accessible through Twitter Blue’s early access Labs feature, allowing iOS users to display their NFTs as hex-shaped profile pictures.
More recently, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki also hinted in a blog post that the video-sharing platform is exploring ways to include Web3 technologies, including NFTs, to help creators make money.
The bottom line
The creator economy is booming like never before, and social media platforms are doing everything in their power to retain top creators.
According to the Influencer Marketing Hub report, the creator economy is now worth $104.2 billion as of May 2021. The research further expects around one billion people to identify as creators within the next five years. As a result, investments in the creator space have reached a record $1.3 billion.
To conclude, decentralized technologies like the metaverse and NFTs offer independent creators and artists an alternative path to making money without paying hefty fees. Or at least that's the promise Big Tech firms are offering. How successful will Meta be in creating such a space is yet to be decided.
Share what you learn 🤝
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