Instagram announces the launch of a pilot test on Monday aimed at integrating NFTs, available only to a limited number of US users.
Summary
NFTs coming to Instagram
Meta’s popular social network, Instagram, will soon support Non-Fungible Tokens from the three main blockchains Ethereum, Solana and Polygon. The pilot project is expected to be launched as early as next week, according to press reports.
Back in March, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg announced that the company would soon support NFTs, during a conversation at the SXSW Conference with Daymond John, founder and CEO of clothing brand FUBU.
The test is expected to start on Monday 9 May in beta for very few users, offering the possibility to post NFTs purchased from third-party marketplaces that are on the Ethereum, Polygon, Solana and Flow blockchains.
According to rumors reported by Coindesk, the NFTs posted on the social network will not be paid for, unlike Twitter, which has been supporting NFTs as paid profile images with its twitter blue service for some time now. It is worth noting that this very service had received heavy criticism from the new owner of the social network, Elon Musk.
This is annoying pic.twitter.com/KAkDl29CTX
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 21, 2022
How will the service work
In the new service offered by Instagram, users, after linking their wallets to their profiles, will be able to prove that they are the owners of the NFTs posted, which should initially only concern works of art, display them on their profiles and tag the creators of the works created.
The announcement made by Instagram was followed by that of the American coffee chain Starbucks, which announced its intention to launch its NFTs by the end of the year, considering this tool as an important marketing tool to increase awareness of its brand,
Brady Brewer, Chief Marketing Officer of Starbucks, told investors:
“Emerging technologies associated with web3, and specifically NFTs, now enable this aspiration and allow us to extend who Starbucks has always been at our core. We are creating the digital third place. To achieve this, we will broaden our framework of what it means for people to be a member of the Starbucks community, adding new concepts such as ownership and community-based membership models that we see developing in the web3 space”.
Back in April, the company’s CEO said that they were exploring the possibility of entering the NFT world. A few days ago, the official confirmation arrived, explaining that the project would concern art related to coffee storytelling.
A post on the company blog reads:
“We plan to start with our first NFT collection, membership and community later this year, based on coffee art and storytelling. It will come with a host of unique experiences and benefits, worthy of a genesis NFT collection from Starbucks”.
Starbucks would be yet another case of a big company entering the NFT market, following big fashion brands such as Richmond, Prada, Gucci, Off-white, Louis Vuitton, Luxottica or car brands such as Hyundai, Ferrari and Lamborghini.
