Instagram investing in NFT support with digital collectibles feature, available now for select creators

Instagram is working to support NFTs. Instagram is a photo-sharing social network with limited resources. The Facebook-turned-Meta-owned service admits that supporting decentralized technology on a centralized platform is a huge effort, but Instagram has the resources to spare!

Instagram’s head Adam Mosseri delivered today’s non-fungible news in calm, collected video. It almost seems like this is a logical explanation.

“This week we’re beginning to test digital collectibles with a handful of US creators and collectors who will be able to share NFTs on Instagram. There will be no fees associated with posting or sharing a digital collectible on IG,” says Mosseri.

And maybe it does make sense. Facebook is diving head first into the metaverse pool, and NFTs might make for the perfect pool toys. It’s all an abstraction that I can’t see beyond the level where my mind is limited to seeing my Instagram feed on my tablet.

If NFT support via Instagram really tickles your fancy, here are some :

details

• available for select creators and collectors;
• blockchain support includes Ethereum and Polygon;
• wallet support includes Rainbow, MetaMask, and Trust

And that’s about as much NFT talk as I can pretend to understand for now. Follow this helpful Twitter thread from Meta’s Alexandru Voica while I prepare to tell my great grandkids that “back in my day, Instagram was a place for posting pictures.”

As ever, the company position on a proper Instagram for iPad app is that “it would be nice to do, but there’s a lot to do and only so many people, so it hasn’t made the cut,” according to Mosseri. But yay NFTs, right?