Industry News


NFT Art Coming Soon to your IG Feed—What it Means for Creators

May 10, 2022

By Hillary K. Grigonis

© mundissima

Collectors could soon have a way to display their digital art and collectibles—Instagram announced that it is testing the ability to share NFTs, beginning this week, news just announced by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. This would allow both creators and collectors to display NFT art on their profiles. Zuckerberg noted that Facebook is expected to gain similar abilities soon.

NFTs, or Non-Fungible Tokens, are digital collectibles that have recently emerged as another way for artists to sell their work. But, as digital art pieces, they exist in the blockchain rather than displayed on walls. NFTs emerging on social media could give collectors a way to display their collection. For creators, the change could help put their work in front of a larger audience.

[Read: Lindsay Adler’s 10 Steps to Selling Photographs as NFTs]

In addition to NFT art being able to display on IG profiles, they can also be shared to the news feed, Stories, and in messages, according to Engadget. The first NFTs to be supported will be on the Etherum and Polygon blockchains, with Rainbow, MetaMask, and Trust Wallets, with additional platforms expected.

Sharing the NFTs won’t require any fees, Instagram head Adam Mosseri said when the announcement was made. In a video, Mosseri talked about the creator economy, suggesting that, while the start is sharing, the roll out of NFTs could include further tools for creators down the road. “The creator economy is incredibly important to Instagram,” he said. “Creators are incredibly important to Instagram, But one of the challenging things we need to solve as an industry is how to help creators make a living doing what they love. Right now, there are a number of ways for creators to make money, but they are often unpredictable and changing rapidly.”

Mosseri says that the platform is starting small, but planning to build additional NFT features. Facebook compatibility is already in the works, as well as turning NFTs into augmented reality artwork to mix with the real world for Instagram Stories. “We want to make sure that we can learn from the community,” Mosseri said in the video.

The Instagram head also noted that the change will also help make NFTs accessible to a broader range of people. Theoretically, sharing NFT art on Instagram could help put those pieces in front of Instagram users who aren’t yet part of an NFT platform. Integration into such a large platform could also help give the rapidly growing NFT universe more merit.

As a test, the NFTs are only rolling out to a handful of accounts first.