- Kyle Chua
Meta “Winding Down” Support for NFTs
Meta is no longer as high on non-fungible tokens (NFT) as it was less than a year ago.
Stephane Kasriel, Meta’s Head of Commerce and Financial Technologies, in a Twitter thread, said the social media giant is "winding down" support for digital collectibles to focus on other ways it can support creators and businesses.
"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 impact at scale, such as messaging and monetisation opps for Reels," said Kasriel.
He also said Meta plans to continue to invest in fintech tools that the groups they plan to support can use in the future, including messaging payments across the company's different platforms.
"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," he added.
The move comes almost a year after Meta announced it would integrate NFTs across Facebook and Instagram, among other platforms. Instagram, for example, in May 2022 debuted the ability to let users display NFTs on their profiles and would later allow the minting and selling of these digital tokens on the platform itself. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg last year also hinted that NFTs could help realise the company's metaverse plans, with users being able to turn their avatars' clothing to an NFT, for instance.
That doesn't appear to be the case now as Meta backtracks on its push on supporting the technology, likely due to Zuckerberg's drive to make 2023 the so-called "year of efficiency" for the company. Meta is reportedly planning another round of layoffs, which could affect thousands of workers, after already sacking over 11,000 workers in November last year.
Among other crypto projects that Meta has given up on include the cryptocurrency Diem and the digital wallet Novi.
Meta is "winding down" support for digital collectibles to focus on other ways it can support creators and businesses.
The move comes almost a year after the social media giant announced it would integrate NFTs across Facebook and Instagram, among other platforms.
It also comes amid Zuckerberg's drive to make 2023 the so-called "year of efficiency" for the company.