David Bridges
Facebook and Instagram users in the US will be able to post their NFTs (nonfungible tokens) from this week, Meta said in a blog post Monday.
The feature allows people to connect their digital wallets to either Facebook or Instagram so they can post their purchased or created digital collectibles. Linking on one app will allow cross-posting to the other. Meta clarified that no feels will be imposed when posting on Instagram or Facebook. Meta says this feature is set for a limited number of people in the US, but didn’t clarify further.
Meta declined to comment, but linked to a tweet by its vice president of financial technologies, Stephane Kasriel.
NFTs are digital tokens that are applied to digital assets, such as videos, pictures, memes and even tweets. A digital token is a unique identifier telling people who owns a specific piece of digital media, even if everyone else can see it online. NFTs are related to cryptocurrency in that the tokens are recorded on a digital ledger. Snoop Dogg and Eminem used their Bored Ape NFTs in a music video shown off at Sunday’s Video Music Awards. NFT art galleries have also been popping up.
The expansion by Meta into NFT posting comes as the company, formally known as Facebook, pivoted last year from being a social media company to a metaverse company. The metaverse is an online composite universe allowing multiple virtual environments and assets to interact simultaneously. An example of this in media is Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One.
Meta believes the metaverse is the next digital frontier and has been investing heavily in its Quest VR headset division, with a new model expected to land in October. Earlier this year, Meta began allowing people to connect their Coinbase wallets and other accounts to Instagram allowing posts of NFTs minted on the Flow blockchain in 100 countries. Given the importance of interoperability of assets within the metaverse, expanding NFT posting to US users is a necessary step.
Maya Kensington
Tessa Everly
