Senior representatives of Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, announced that the company will be shutting down the ability to buy and sell non-fungible tokens (NFTs) on both platforms, less than a year after the feature was introduced.
Stephane Kasriel, the head of commerce and financial technologies at Meta, said in a tweet:
Some product news: across the company, we're looking closely at what we prioritize to increase our focus. We’re winding down digital collectibles (NFTs) for now to focus on other ways to support creators, people, and businesses. ????[1/5]
— Stephane Kasriel (@skasriel) March 13, 2023
According to a spokesperson for the company, Meta is eagerly looking forward to supporting numerous NFT creators who continue to use Instagram and Facebook to showcase their work.
Alongside this, Meta’s CEO, Kasriel, made it clear that the social media behemoth would continue to invest in the deployment of financial technology tools that individuals and enterprises will require in the future.
With Meta Pay, the company is streamlining payments, making checkout and payouts more manageable, and investing in messaging payments across the Meta platform.
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Kasriel affirmed that facilitating opportunities for creators and businesses to connect with their followers and monetize their content is still a top priority. The company will focus on areas that have the potential to make a significant impact at scale, such as messaging and monetization opportunities for Reels.
Following this announcement, industry observers and stakeholders have reacted with a range of opinions. Many comments criticize the social media giant, while others applaud the decision.
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Brooklyn-based photographer and founder of the creative community Allships.co, Dave Krugman, expressed his concern about Meta’s decision, stating that he believes it to be premature and potentially harmful to the development of creator-focused digital art marketplaces.
Some product news: across the company, we're looking closely at what we prioritize to increase our focus. We’re winding down digital collectibles (NFTs) for now to focus on other ways to support creators, people, and businesses. ????[1/5]
— Stephane Kasriel (@skasriel) March 13, 2023
Another critic of Instagram was Matthew Ferrick, the creative lead at Nifty Gateway, who stated that Instagram “just figured out (again) it’s more profitable/easy to continue exploiting artists for eyeballs to sell to advertisers instead of helping artists make money on their platform.”
He concluded, “posts on IG never translated to more sales on NFT marketplaces anyways.”
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Meta changed its policy in July to allow a group of US creators to display NFTs on their profiles. The company launched digital collectibles support on Facebook, initially limited to select creators and only in the United States, and began a slow rollout.