Recently, Meta announced the suspension of further support for NFT on Facebook and Instagram less than a year after announcing plans to have “digital collectibles” across its entire platform.
This update coincides with the social network laying off thousands of workers and shutting down several projects amid what Mark Zuckerberg describes as a “year of efficiency” for the company.
“We are ending digital collectibles (NFTs) for the time being to focus on other ways to support creators, individuals, and businesses,” wrote Stephane Kasriel, Meta’s head of Commerce and Fintech, in an update.
“We learned a lot that we will be able to apply to the products we continue to build to support creators and businesses in our applications, both today and in the metaverse.”
He added that the company will instead focus on “reels monetization opportunities” and “message payments across Meta businesses.”
The update comes almost exactly a year after Zuckerberg took the stage at SXSW to announce that Instagram was working on NFT support, which debuted last May.
The company announced another major feature expansion in November when it unveiled plans to allow creators to upload and sell collectibles directly on Instagram.
Kasriel did not elaborate on why Meta is pushing back on NFTs, which Zuckerberg had indicated could play an important role in the company’s metaverse plans.
“I hope you know that the clothes that your avatar wears in the metaverse will basically be able to be created as NFTs so that you can take them with you between different digital locations,” he said during his appearance at SXSW last year.
However, this is not the only ambitious initiative by Meta that has fallen on deaf ears in the last year.
The company last year also terminated Novi, the cryptocurrency wallet it was preparing that was rumoured to have NFT support in its immediate plans.
Meta also ended its multiverse division, Reality Labs, and the program that paid additional money to Reels creators.
“Let me be clear: 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 monetization opps for Reels,” Kasriel, Meta's spokesman wrote.
Meta has been cutting costs across the company as it scrambles to make its metaverse dreams a (virtual) reality.
Reality Labs, the division of Meta that works on AR and VR products, lost $13.7 billion last year.
In November, Meta laid off 11,000 employees, or about 13% of its global workforce, marking the largest cuts in company history.
And as Meta weathers this storm, the hype around NFTs has died down significantly.
At the time, Meta’s interest in NFTs seemed like it could intersect with its plans for a virtual reality metaverse — CEO Mark Zuckerberg has said that he hoped users would one day be able to mint virtual clothing as NFTs, for example.
With this latest development from Meta, one cannot but raise alarm over how global economic recession is relentlessly wreaking nightmarish havoc on enterprises and citizens.
This is indeed one wave its motions and directions cannot be predicted with precision.
What else does our world need to do to put a check on this looming global catastrophe?
A world where only a few individuals can do justice to Maslow's hierarchy of human needs is only paving way for an implosion.
Again, the ongoing Russian-Ukraine war seems not too far away from them all.
0 Comment(s)
SPONSORED
HEADLINE
TRENDING