On Monday, Meta’s commerce and fintech lead Stephane Kasriel shared via Twitter that Meta is “winding down” its integration of NFTs to Facebook and Instagram. A spokesperson for Meta, Joshua Gunter, confirmed the decision in an email to a credible news source stating that Meta will soon stop testing the ability to mint and sell NFTs on Instagram as well as the ability to share NFTs on Facebook and Instagram.
“Across the company, we’re looking closely at what we prioritize to increase our focus,” Kasriel said. “We’re winding down digital collectibles (NFTs) for now to focus on other ways to support creators, people, and businesses.” Instead, the company is focusing on “areas where we can make an impact at scale,” like messaging and monetization on Reels and improving Meta Pay, according to The Verge.
The NFT integrations seem to be one casualty of CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s drive to make 2023 the “year of efficiency,” along with the Reels Play bonus scheme. Nevertheless, they were shut down last year along with Meta’s Novi digital wallet and Diem, a cryptocurrency it had supported.
While Meta attempts to abandon its ambition for NFTs, other companies still find flocking into a market that crumbled in 2022 and lost billions of dollars in value following stratospheric levels of excitement in early 2021. Starbucks recently sold out of a selection of 2,000 $100 NFTs in its Odyssey customer loyalty program, and Sesame Street has just announced an NFT cooperation. Reddit continues to advertise its “digital collectible” avatars which are NFTs.
Olagoke Ajibola is a creative writer and content producer with an eye for details and excellence. He has a demonstrated history of telling stories for TV, Film and Online. Aside from being fascinated by the power of imagination, his other interest are travel, sport, reading and meeting people.
To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behaviour or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.
Functional
Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes.The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
