Instagram Begins NFT Trial In Feeds, Stories And DMs

JAKARTA - Instagram started testing Non-Fungible Token (NFT) on selected content creators in the United States (US) this week. This trial is certain to be free of charge.

Instagram boss Adam Mosseri in his short video said that selected content creators will have the ability to display NFT in their Feed, Stories and DMs.

NFT details are displayed in a similar way to profiles and products that are tagged and named digital collections. Clicking on a tag will display details such as the name of the creator and owner.

The blockchains supported for displaying NFT on Instagram are Ethereum and Polygon, with support for Flow and Solana coming soon. Compatible third-party wallets to use at launch will include Rainbow, MetaMask, and Trust Wallet, with Coinbase, Dapper, and Phantom coming soon.

Mosseri outlined that only a small number of content creators will have access to the Instagram test, but the company plans to roll out more NFT-related functionality in the future after receiving feedback from this initial test.

“I want to admit upfront that NFT and blockchain technology are all about distributing trust and distributing power. But Instagram is basically a centralized platform, so there's tension there. So one of the reasons we started small is that we wanted to make sure that we could learn from the community," said Mosseri.

"We wanted to make sure that we looked for ways to embrace the principles of distributed trust and distributed power, despite the fact that we are, yes, a centralized platform. We really think that one of the unique opportunities we have is to make web3 technology accessible. by more people. And NFT in particular we think will appeal not only to creators who create NFT art, but also to people who want to collect it," he continued.

Furthermore, Mosseri also stated that the creator economy is very important to Instagram, but one of the challenges the company sees is how it currently has a number of different ways for creators to make money, many of which are unpredictable and change rapidly.

According to TechCrunch, Tuesday, May 10, this new launch will create exciting opportunities for a group of content creators.

Meanwhile, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said similar functionality (NFT) will be coming soon to Facebook and possibly to other Meta apps in the future.

Zuckerberg also explained that Meta will be working on NFT augmented reality (AR), or NFT 3D, which users can bring to Instagram Stories using Spark AR, which is the company's AR software platform.

Instagram's NFT trial comes as Twitter enabled NFT profile pictures for premium users earlier this year. However, Instagram and Twitter aren't the only digital giants looking to embrace NFT.

Because YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki recently revealed that she could embrace Web3 technology, including NFT, as a means to help YouTube content creators make money.