• by Colin Kirkland , March 16, 2022

At South by Southwest (SXSW) on Tuesday, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that in the coming months, non-fungible tokens (NFTs) will be integrated into Instagram.

“We’re working on bringing NFTs to Instagram in the near term,” Zuckerberg said. Although he said Instagram users will likely be able to showcase their NFTs and mint new ones directly on the social media platform, he did not provide specific details about the process.

Meta hinted at NFT integration last year, when Instagram head Adam Mosseri said the team was “actively exploring NFTs.” Last January, The Financial Times published a report showing that Instagram and Facebook teams were looking into NFT profile pictures, minting, and a potential marketplace. 

At SXSW, Zuckerberg also hinted at the role NFTs might play in his company’s future. The clothes or accessories that an avatar wears could be minted as an NFT, for example. “There’s like a bunch of technical things that need to get worked out before that’ll really be seamless to happen,” he added.

Other social networks have already adopted NFT integration. In January, Twitter invited users to post an NFT as their profile picture, adding a hexagonal shape that allowed curious users to click and explore the NFT’s metadata. 

The same month, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki also hinted at NFT adoption in a letter deeming NFTs a potential future source of revenue for creators on the long-video platform. 

Zuckerberg attempted to utilize blockchain technology in 2019, when he tried to launch Libra, or Diem, a digital currency that ultimately failed this past January when U.S. Senators Sherrod Brown (D-OH) and Brian Schatz (D-HI) publicly questioned Meta’s credibility. 

“Facebook cannot be trusted to manage a payment system or digital currency when its existing ability to manage risks and keep consumers safe has proven wholly insufficient,” they said, referencing the Cambridge Analytica scandal, in which the platform leaked the personal information of 87 million users.