Meta, parent company of Instagram of WhatsApp and Facebook, has recently announced that it would be ending its work on digital collectibles (NFTs).
In a Twitter thread, Stephane Kasriel, Commerce and FinTech Lead at Meta, announced that features supporting NFTs would be disabled across the platform. Meta Platforms Inc will stop supporting digital collectibles or non-fungible tokens (NFTs) on its platforms; WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook.
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
“We’re winding down digital collectibles (NFTs) for now to focus on other ways to support creators, people, and businesses,” Kasriel tweeted. Kasriel didn’t offer any reasoning or justification for the decision, but said that creating financial opportunities for creators “remains a top priority.”
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The company didn’t release any information about precisely when the features would be disabled, and representatives from Meta didn’t immediately respond request for comment.
The news came as a shock to many in the NFT community, especially since the company only recently rolled out the features in recent months.
In August of 2022, the company enabled NFT features for users in 100 countries all over the world. However, the tools only allowed users to display NFTs they created or collected. However, the platforms’ core NFT functionalities had yet to be added.
Namely, the ability for users to create/mint, buy, and sell NFTs with one another. It wasn’t until November of 2022 that things changed. That month, Instagram allowed a selected group of creators was allowed to start selling NFTs on the platform. It was only four months ago.