The short-lived NFT features were first launched in May, but Meta’s financial technology lead said it is “winding down” the tools to focus elsewhere.
Big Tech Company, Meta is removing its inconsequential features from its social media platforms, Facebook and Instagram, about 10 months after they were first launched.
Stéphane Kasriel, head of business and fintech at Meta, tweeted the news on March 13, saying that Meta is “discontinuing” its NFT support to “focus on other ways to support creators, people and companies “.
Kasriel added that the company always prioritizes users to “connect with their fans and earn money” and will focus on tools such as creating payment channels on its platform and through its messaging app, and the monetization of Reels, short videos that feature on Facebook and Instagram. In particular, Kasriel said he is focusing on Meta Pay, a payment company on the platform, which in the future may support cryptocurrency according to May’s filings.
NFT is available on premium platforms, as testing began in May with some creators on Instagram before spreading to Facebook in June. The NFT strategy expanded again in August, as Instagram made NFT tools for 100 countries. In November last year, Meta launched a “tool package” for creating and trading NFT within Instagram. The announcement received angry reviews from the crypto community, with NFT analyst Dave Krugman tweeting that it was a “short-term decision” and Meta “stopped before it started.”
“The confidence gained last year is now being lost,” Krugman added.
Podcaster Marc Colcer said the move “seems shortsighted for a company that should be thinking long term” and asked for clarity on Meta’s decision to withdraw NFT support. Allen Hena, co-founder of the company Web3 Earth Labs, is strong in his words, saying that Meta stopped the idea because he “understood that using public cryptonets means that you cannot exploit the creators”.
Meta’s divestment of its NFT tools is in line with other cost-cutting measures across the industry as it focuses on its more expensive metaverse targets.
Last year alone, the company’s Reality Labs metaverse division posted its biggest annual loss at $13.7 billion. Meta also made the first major layoffs in the company’s history in November, lying off 13% of its workforce, or some 11,000 workers.
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