UPDATE: Mark Zuckerberg confirmed at the South by Southwest (SXSW) convergence that NFTs will be coming to Instagram but gave no indication of when that might be.
"I’m not ready to kind of announce exactly what that’s going to be today," Zuckerberg said, speaking on a panel at SXSW. "But over the next several months, the ability to bring some of your NFTs in, hopefully over time be able to mint things within that environment."
There are still lots of technicalities to iron out, but it would seem that eventually you will be able to buy, sell and mint NFTs on the platform. Zuckerberg also explained that people would be able to use Instagram as a platform to display NFTs they already own as well as minting new ones.
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ORIGINAL STORY (23 Jan 2022): Meta (formerly known as Facebook) could be the next company to join the NFT trend. Although there has been no official word on it, Instagram and Facebook are reportedly testing a way to showcase NFTs, according to the Financial Times, while Meta is supposedly in discussions about a marketplace.
Over the last couple of years, NFTs have become massive. In fact, in 2021 NFT was Collin Dictionary’s word of the year and in the first three months of last year, over $200 million was spent on them. If you’re still not really sure what they are or how you buy/sell them, then a) you’re not alone and b) we’ve got an article dedicated to how to sell your photographs as NFTs which explains pretty much everything there is to know.
Despite being around since 2015, NFTs really only started to take off in 2021 after Mike Winkelmamm (aka Beeple) sold a collage for $69 million. The work of art entitled Everyday: The First 5000 was a collection of digital drawings by the artist collated into one big piece and sold in a first-of-its-kind auction at Christie’s.
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Since then, NFTs have been the talk of the town. Marketplaces such as OpenSea (the first and most popular) and Rarible have experienced massive growth in a very short amount of time and by the end of 2021, nearly $41 billion worth of cryptocurrency had been sent on open-source blockchains such as Ethereum
Meta dipping its toes into the NFT universe wouldn’t be all too surprising. After all, the social media giant isn't one to sleep on new technology and it would be a good way of selling unique digital goods. By starting its own marketplace, Meta could stop other NFT platforms such as OpenSea from gaining too much traction if NFTs are here for the long haul.
Whether or not Meta does decide to sell NFTs on its own marketplace we will have to wait and see. There are still a lot of questions surrounding NFTs such as can they be stolen, can they be more environmentally friendly and how else they can be used in the world. If Meta does decide to launch a marketplace, it would be wise to do it sooner rather than later since no one really knows if NFTs are here to stay.
Read more:
What are NFTs
Selling photographs as NFTs
Best full-frame cameras
Best mirrorless cameras
