Meta to include NFTs on Instagram soon, says Zuckerberg

Mark Zuckerberg (Meta) announced at SXSW that the Meta team is planning to introduce NFTs into Instagram in the short term.  While Zuckerberg didn't go into great detail, he did say that the inclusion of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) into the company's Instagram app has started and will finalize once the team sorts out some technical issues, according to TechCrunch

“We are working on bringing NFTs to Instagram in the near term,” Zuckerberg said in a conversation with Shark Tank’s Daymond John. “I’m not ready to announce exactly what that’s going to be today, but, over the next several months, the ability to bring some of your NFTs in, and hopefully over time be able to mint things within that environment.”

Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri revealed in December that Meta was "actively exploring" NFTs with the goal or reaching a wider audience. "I think it's an interesting place for us to play and hopefully help creators," Mosseri wrote on Instagram.

Those plans had already been made: Instagram hosted "Creator Week" last summer, a closed virtual conference that the company described in its invitations as a "private event for NFT creators."

According to a January report, progress was made on features that would allow you to use an NFT as a profile and mint NFTs on the platform, as well as discussions about creating a marketplace.

Those first two features align with what Zuckerberg said onstage, but it's still unclear how the minting process on Instagram would be done. Could a popular picture or story be sold as NFT?   Or could users create NFTs that serve as passes to allow people to see specific stories? Meta hasn't said anything yet, but it appears that minting features won't be available until later in the game. The idea for a marketplace appears to be even further off, as it did not appear to receive a specific response from Zuckerberg, despite the massive valuation.

Instagram's interest in NFTs aligns with parent company Meta's broader vision of a profitable interconnected virtual world brimming with digital goods. “I would hope that the clothing that your avatar is wearing in the Metaverse can be minted as an NFT and you can take it between different places,” Zuckerberg said.

While the company's NFT proposals aren't much of a surprise to anyone who's been following Meta's ambitions, the integration may be too much for some creators who are wary of the technology.

Instagram isn't the first social media platform to embrace NFTs. Earlier this year, Twitter included NFT profile pictures in its services for premium users — quite different from what Meta wants to achieve. NFTs may become more popular on Twitter compared to Instagram due to Jack Dorsey's crypto hype and the platform's existing NFT community.

There's also the issue of Meta's track record in the cryptoverse, which is, to put it mildly, spotty. Faced with opposition from central banks and regulators, the company scaled back its ambitious goals for its own digital currency which has made little to no progress.