Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announces plan to launch NFTs on Instagram in the near future

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg revealed that he is planning to launch Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) on Instagram in the coming days. Addressing the SXSW, the tech giant informed that currently, Meta is working to resolve some prevailing technical issues on the application, following which he shall glide to bring in some NFTs to the popular photo-sharing platform. By the time, he expects, the users will be able to "mint things within that environment." 

"We are working on bringing NFTs to Instagram. I am 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 of the time be able to mint things without environment," Mark Zuckerberg said while speaking to Shark Tank's Daymond John on Tuesday at SXSW conference, held in Austin, Texas. 

While Zuckerberg revealed his tentative plans, he remained tight-lipped about the developments or the potential dates for the formal announcement. There has been a whiff about Meta's plans of launching NFTs since last year after the company hosted 'Creator Week', which extended invitations to only NFT creators. Later in December, Instagram head Adam Mosseri also flagged that the Meta-owned platform was also "actively" looking at NFTs on Instagram for larger audience access. "I think it is an interesting place that we can play and also to hopefully help creators," Mosseri had written on an Instagram story. 

NFTs on Instagram

In January 2022, a report that teams at Facebook and Instagram were working on NFT integrations also emerged. However, there was no follow-up update on how Instagram would allow users to "mint" the digital tokens. If launched, Instagram will be the second platform after Twitter to allow users to set NFTs as their profile pictures. 

For the unversed, NFT stands for Non-Fungible tokens, which at this point are among the internet classics. NFTs are tokens that one can use to represent ownership of unique items, beginning from tacos to toilet papers to just memes created on the internet. NFT can literally be anything like drawing, music, artificial intelligence, and so on so forth created digitally. As the Verge explains, most NFTs are part of the Ethereum blockchain, however, much different from bitcoin or dogecoins.

NFTs could play important role in metaverse: Zuckerberg

Speaking to John, the Meta head also said that NFTs could have an important role to play in the metaverse. It could be used to buy clothing for the avatar in the metaverse, "you, know, (it) can be basically minted as an NFT and you can take it between your different places," Zuckerberg said. He also informed that internal testing is currently underway to ensure the platform is glitch-free at the time the digital tokens are available on the most popular photo-sharing application. "I think (this) does a bunch of technical things that need to get worked out before," he said. 

In a 50-minute long conversation with the businessman, Zuckerberg shared his vision for a more immersive version of the internet. The tech-expert also discussed the war in Ukraine, calling it a “massively destabilising world event." Lastly, he concluded by pointing out his own shopping habits, saying most of his clothes are purchased from Instagram or Facebook ads, adding that Instagram must work in its ad algorithms. 

(Image: Unsplash/AP)