Instagram to bring NFTs to the timeline

Future. Like every other tech company, Instagram is mulling an entry into the NFT market, potentially giving users the ability to mint them right on the platform. The feature could potentially give Meta a nice new revenue stream, but the true value could be in setting up the infrastructure to make NFTs a vital part of the company’s metaverse plans.

Felt mint, might delete later

Speaking at SXSW, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that NFTs are coming to Instagram sometime in the “next several months.”

• He said that users would have “the ability to bring some of your NFTs in, hopefully over time be able to mint things within that environment.”
• That follows previous reports that found that teams at both Facebook and Instagram were working on those features, as well as exploring creating an NFT marketplace.

How any of this will be implemented is vague so far, but The Verge speculates that potential NFT usages on the platform could be the ability for users to sell popular posts directly as NFTs. User-owned NFTs could even be used as passes to see exclusive Stories from their favorite influencers (like a blockchain-backed Twitter Blue subscription).

And then there’s Meta’s larger metaverse ambition, where NFTs could be used, as Zuckerberg himself noted, to mint your avatar’s clothing or act as a pass to different areas within the metaverse. At this point, if a company is transitioning to Web3, it will be crucial to embed NFTs within their core products…