Meta has announced the rollout of features that will expand its support for NFTs on Instagram. As part of Meta’s expansion into digital assets, creators will soon be able to mint their own NFTs, and sell them both on and off Instagram. The digital collectibles features are currently being tested with a limited number of creators in the US and will thereafter be rolled out to more countries.
Since August, creators have only been able to share NFTs on Instagram via posts and stories. Now creators will have an end-to-end toolkit supported by the Polygon blockchain, allowing creators to create, showcase and sell their digital assets directly on Instagram.
In addition to the blockchains and wallets that are already supported on Instagram, Meta is also adding more features, including video NFTs and support for the Solana blockchain. It already supported Ethereum, Polygon and Flow. In addition, NFT owners can use the Phantom wallet.
It’s notable that the screen interfaces seem to avoid the use of the term NFT, instead opting to refer to them as digital collectibles. Meta is not the only one to adopt this tactic, as some view NFTs as scams.
The expansion of features supporting NFTs comes after Meta’s 2022 profits for the third-quarter were less than half of last year’s, whilst the company’s stock price fell to a quarter of its value at the beginning of 2022. This was a consequence of changes made to Apple’s privacy settings relating to targeted ads, as well as Meta’s ambitious R&D investment in the metaverse.
Instagram is not the only social media platform making a push into NFTs. In July, social media site Reddit launched a collectible avatar marketplace on Polygon. The marketplace saw high volumes in October, but has recently experienced a decline in sales, with yesterday’s volumes a fifth of sales in the last week of October.
Whilst Meta’s expansion into NFTs as a revenue generation strategy will be impacted by the decline in demand for digital assets, the expansion is a stepping stone in R&D and revenue initiatives focused on NFTs in the metaverse.
Beyond product features, Meta also recently partnered with L’Oreal to launch a metaverse accelerator, which will support startups undertaking web3 projects.
