News

Facebook and Instagram to Allow Users to Create, Display and Sell NFTs

BY Langston Thomas •

January 20, 2022

Meta, the newly rebranded parent company of Facebook and Instagram, is taking another next step towards becoming a metaverse company. According to a report from the Financial Times, the social media giant is currently in the works on plans to let users create, showcase, and sell NFTs on its platforms.

Only a day after Meta launched a beta test for Instagram subscriptions, it has been revealed — by several people familiar with Meta’s current NFT endeavors — that the larger-than-life tech conglomerate is gearing up to enter the NFT ecosystem. As Instagram head Adam Mosseri said his team was “actively exploring NFTs” back in December, Financial Times’ Hannah Murphy and Cristina Criddle have reported that the social media platform is now internally testing an NFT showcasing feature.

SCOOP: Facebook has big NFT plans, per sources. So far, it's:
– Internally testing a feature to allow users to showcase their NFTs on Instagram
– Developing a prototype for users to mint NFTs
– Exploring launching an NFT marketplace

w/ @CristinaCriddle https://t.co/ZX6PVjw4O8
— Hannah Murphy (@MsHannahMurphy) January 20, 2022

Considering platforms like OpenSea, Nifty Gateway and MakersPlace have remained frontrunners of the NFT ecosystem for years, Meta’s entrance into NFTs could mean a major shift in the dominance. As NFT sales have surged past $4 billion in the last month alone, the race to defy the worlds current largest NFT marketplaces has been entered by Sotheby’s, Shopify, Gamestop and many more.

While both OpenSea and Coinbase NFT recently announced separate plans to enable fiat payments within their marketplaces, Meta may already have a leg-up on the competition before its NFT features even launch. As the leading name in both social media and VR gaming, integrating NFT trading into already established points of sale could make Facebook and Instagram NFT trading an incredibly simple process.

And while FT reports that Mata’s plans are “at an early stage and could yet change,” Facebook and Instagram are currently “readying” a feature to allow users to both display NFTs as their profile pictures and mint new NFTs on the platforms. Considering Meta has reportedly been discussing launching its own marketplace for some time, it seems it will only be a matter of time before hundreds of millions of users will have the ability to join the weird wide world of NFTs directly from their favorite social media platforms.

Photos courtesy of Meta.