A group of token creators and collectors will soon have the ability to display their tokens on Instagram. We are excited about the future and look forward to seeing what this feature can do for the Instagram community.
Instagram head Adam Mosseri said that a small group of US users will have the ability to display NFTs on their feed, stories, and messages. NFT details are displayed in a similar way to tagged profiles and products and are named “digital collectibles.” Clicking on the tag will display details like the name of the creator and owner.
He said “the test is small to start so that Instagram can learn from the community. Perhaps in an attempt to tackle distrust of a major social networking platform jumping into NFTs, he brings up a tension between large companies like Instagram and the decentralized ethos of Web3.”
“I want to acknowledge upfront that NFTs, blockchain technologies, and Web3 broadly are all about distributing trust, distributing power, but Instagram is fundamentally a centralized platform, so there’s a tension there.”
NFTs that are minted on the Ethereum and Polygon blockchains will be supported for now, with Solana and Flow coming soon according to a spokesperson from Meta.
NFTs on Instagram could help introduce the technology to a broader range of people. Instagram isn’t the first platform to do so: in January, Twitter introduced NFTs on the platform. An icon in the corner of Instagram posts of NFTs also appears as a hexagon. Though companies and celebrities have been quick to jump on NFTs, some recent sales have produced temporary activity spikes.
