A few moments ago, Instagram announced that it would end its work on digital collectibles (NFTs). in a Twitter threadStephane Kasriel, Commerce and FinTech Lead at Meta, announced that NFT-supported features would be disabled across the entire platform.
“We are looking closely at what we prioritize to increase our focus. We are removing digital collectibles (NFTs) for now to focus on other ways to support creators, individuals, and businesses,” she wrote. Kasriel offered no reasoning or justification for the decision, but said creating financial opportunities for creators “remains a priority.”
The company did not release any information about when the features would be disabled, and representatives for Meta did not immediately respond to nft now’s request for comment. Ultimately, the news came as a shock to many creators on the platform, especially since the company only rolled out the features in the past few months.
Instagram NFT Timeline
Instagram began testing its NFT features with select creators in May 2022. However, most users only got their first taste of the platform’s NFT integrations in August of the same year, when the company enabled the features for 100 users. countries all over the world. the world.
However, at the time, the features only allowed users to display the NFTs they created or collected. The core NFT functionalities of the platforms had yet to be added, namely the ability for users to mint, buy and sell NFTs from each other.
It wasn’t until November 2022 that things changed. Just before the new year, Instagram allowed a handful of creators to start selling NFTs on the platform. The artists who were selected were hopeful, believing that the movement would lead to a new and more equitable creation economy.
“The NFT community would be smart to understand how intertwined we are with social media, […] I believe that with our powers combined, we can create a more sustainable system for creatives working in interconnected online communities.” David Krugmanone of the creators selected to test Instagram’s NFT marketplace features, told nft now at the time.
That was only four months ago.
The Web3 community responds
When the news broke today, Krugman was one of the first creators to respond. “What a myopic move. [The] The inclusion of digital collectibles has a lot of potential to help creators engage their communities and counter the pitfalls of attention-based ad economies. You guys quit before you even started. A real shame and undoing a lot of really smart work from great people there,” she wrote.
Meanwhile, Connie Ansaldi, CEO and founder of Carnaval Art, a blockchain-powered loyalty service for businesses, claimed the company lacked foresight and allowed their fear to guide them. “You are not thinking in the long term. What if you had said goodbye to the internet when the bubble burst in the 2000s? There would be no Google. Or Meta whatever,” he said.
Other well-known artists, like Nyan Cat creator Chris Torres, mocked the company for its ill-conceived and ill-thought-out plan.
But despite the surprise and anger of the creators, sudden moves like this are unprecedented in Meta, especially in recent months. Reality Labs, the division of Meta that works on AR and VR products, lost more than $13 billion only in 2022, and the company has been cutting costs in recent months. In November 2022, the same month that it rolled out its core NFT functions, Meta laid off some 11,000 employees. The event was the largest outage in the company’s history.
Instagram and Meta have yet to offer a detailed breakdown of their decision to discontinue their NFT features, and it’s unclear whether or not their financial losses were part of the consideration. That being said, it looks like Meta’s plans to take over the metaverse may not get off to a terribly good start.
This is a breaking story and was updated.
