Facebook and Instagram users in the US will be able to post their NFTs (nonfungible tokens) from this week, Meta said in a blog post Monday.
The feature allows people to connect their digital wallets
to either Facebook or Instagram so they can post their purchased or created
digital collectibles. Linking on one app will allow cross-posting to the other.
Meta says there are no fees in posting NFTs on Instagram. It's uncertain
whether fees are placed when posting on Facebook.
Meta says this feature is currently set for a limited number
of people in the US, but didn't clarify further.
Meta didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.
NFTs are digital tokens that are applied to digital assets,
such as videos, pictures, memes and even tweets. A digital token is a unique
identifier telling people who owns a specific piece of digital media, even if
everyone else can see it online.
NFTs are related to cryptocurrency in that digital tokens
are recorded on a digital ledger. Snoop Dogg and Eminem have used their Bored
Ape NFTs in a music video shown off at last week's Video Music Awards. NFT art
galleries have also been popping up.
Meta's expansion into NFT posting comes as the company,
formally known as Facebook, pivoted last year from being a social media company
to a metaverse company.
The metaverse is an online composite universe allowing
multiple virtual environments and assets to interact simultaneously. An example
of this in media is Ernest Cline's "Ready Player One." Meta believes
the Metaverse is the next digital frontier and has been investing heavily in
its Quest headset division, with a new model expected to land in October.
Earlier this year, Meta began allowing people to connect
their Coinbase Wallets and other accounts to Instagram allowing posts of NFTs
minted on the Flow blockchain in 100 countries.
Given the importance of interoperability of assets within
the metaverse, expanding NFT posting to US users is a necessary step.