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Instagram is opening its platform to NFTs, paving the way for mainstream visibility and moving closer to the promise of digital fashion gadgets.
After testing it in May, Instagram’s Digital Collections feature, which allows people to share NFTs in their feeds, will be rolled out to people in more than 100 countries, the Meta-owned company said on Thursday. People will be able to share images of their NFTs by linking their crypto wallets and will be able to tag creators and owners. Coinbase and Dapper crypto wallets will now be supported, in addition to MetaMask, Rainbow and Trust Wallet.
The feature will bring NFTs to a mass audience: Instagram reports around 2 billion monthly active users and is very much in the wheelhouse of fashion and beauty brands. These industries are starting to experiment with NFTs, whose community currently lives mostly on Twitter and Discord – a brand that sells NFTs will have more reach and awareness on Instagram. Gucci, for example, has about 49 million followers on Instagram, but just over 56,000 on its Gucci Vault Discord server.
For creators and brands, more visibility means more education and potential monetization opportunities, says photographer Sophia Wilson, who participated in the trial, in part because of the immediate increase in viewership and engagement.
“The NFT community has become a very white and male-dominated space, which we hate to see happen in another art space,” says Wilson. “If you’re just scrolling through Instagram and you see an NFT, suddenly it seems a lot less scary and you’re able to understand the concept of what it is.”
Only about a quarter of US adults are familiar with NFTs, up 11 percent from a year ago, according to Insider Intelligence, indicating the potential for increased interest in the technology.
