Stephane Kasriel, Meta’s head of commerce and financial technologies, has made a huge announcement after saying on Twitter that Meta NFTs will be going down. According to the Meta official, NFTs on Instagram and Facebook will be taken down and won't have a place in the company's plan anymore. This is a surprising development as Meta had shown signs of committing to improving how NFTs were sold and purchased on their social media platforms.
The NFT feature on Meta platforms was short-lived, as it has not even been up to a year since the company launched it. It is barely ten months since the feature was released.
"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," Stephane Kasriel said while sharing the news in a thread on Twitter.
" First: a big Thank You to the partners who joined us on this journey and who's doing great work in a dynamic space. Proud of the relationships we built. And look forward to supporting the many NFT creators who continue using Instagram and Facebook to amplify their work," Kasriel added. Cutting out NFTs on Instagram and Facebook comes as a huge blow to the NFT community, who were looking forward to making extensive use of the Meta platforms to market their digital collectibles.
However, Meta said they would continue to support creators and NFT collectors in every other way apart from supporting NFTs on their platforms. The tech giant says that they will explore other areas which they can use to support creators. "We learned a ton that we’ll be able to apply to products we’re continuing to build to support creators, people, and businesses on our apps, both today and in the metaverse," Meta said. According to Meta suggestions, they say they will now allow users to monetize the videos they create on their reels. Also, NFT creators can still advertise their NFT collections using reels on Instagram and Facebook.
Meta Prioritizing Other Projects
Meta NFTs have been dropped; the company said they are exploring other projects that will still benefit their users. Kasriel mentioned a focus on Meta Pay — This is Meta's payment platform which they will integrate soon. This will allow users to make and receive payments on Meta applications.
"Let me be clear: creating opportunities for creators and businesses to connect with their fans and monetize remains a priority, and we're going to focus on areas where we can make an impact at scale, such as messaging and monetization opps for Reels."
"And we’ll continue investing in fintech tools that people and businesses will need for the future. We’re streamlining payments w/ Meta Pay, making checkout & payouts easier, and investing in messaging payments across Meta," Kasriel said at the end of the thread. This is a bold move from Mark Zuckerberg and his team. As expected, few people are happy with the tech giant's changes in their company. According to many users, they would have preferred Meta to continue their support for NFTs on Instagram and Facebook while still integrating Meta Pay. For others, they have accepted whatever Meta wants to do with their platform.