Meta has enabled NFTs for US users

Meta has enabled NFTs for U.S. Facebook and Instagram users, thus expanding access to Non-Fungible Tokens on major social networks.

Meta and the activation of NFTs on Facebook and Instagram in the U.S.

Mark Zuckerberg’s company, Meta Platform, has activated the feature that supports NFTs on Facebook and Instagram social networks, currently only for users in the U.S. 

According to the reported update, as of yesterday, all Facebook and Instagram users in the U.S. can link their digital wallets and share NFTs, or “digital collectibles.” 

Not only that, such support of NFTs will be available to all Instagram users in the 100 countries where the feature is supported.

Currently, Meta supports NFTs on three blockchains: Ethereum, Flow, and Polygon, but in the future, Meta plans to add support for the Solana Blockchain as well.

Meta: from sharing NFTs on Instagram and Facebook to activating the feature 

Yesterday’s activation of the NFT feature for U.S. users of Instagram and Facebook comes after last month’s update.

You can now post digital collectibles on @Facebook and @Instagram ✨ Connect your digital wallet to either app and start sharing your #NFTs today.

Learn more 👉 https://t.co/aH8036aVwX pic.twitter.com/0AuZWHUFsy

— Meta (@Meta) August 29, 2022

“You can now post digital collectibles on Facebook and Instagram

Connect your digital wallet to either app and start sharing your #NFTs today.”

After several tests, in fact, Meta announced that it had enabled the ability to post the NFTs they own on FB and IG social networks. All it took was to link one’s wallet to either app once to share digital collectibles in both. 

Specifically, the wallets that can interact with Meta’s NFT feature are MetaMask, Coinbase Wallet, Rainbow, Trust Waller, and Dapper Wallet. 

That update already allowed the ability to automatically tag the creator and owner of the NFT, of course, if the user’s privacy settings allow it. 

In addition, social sharing of NFTs already included no additional fee from Meta. 

The hiring freeze and team restructuring.

As NFTs landed on its social networks, Meta also announced that it would freeze hiring and restructure the team. 

The purpose would be to cut costs and shift priorities, putting a pause on the social media giant’s years of rapid growth and expansion. 

Thus, the company will reduce the budget for most of the team, even the growing ones, and individual employees will decide how to handle the staffing changes. That could mean not filling roles that employees leave, moving people to other teams, or working to “manage people who are not successful.”

During a weekly question-and-answer session with employees, Zuckerberg reportedly said:

“I had hoped the economy would have more clearly stabilized by now, but from what we’re seeing it doesn’t yet seem like it has, so we want to plan somewhat conservatively.”

Meta: bet $70 billion on Metaverse technology

As it turns out, headcount cuts could be used to bet everything on Metaverse technology instead. 

And in fact, some analyses recently confirmed that Meta would already be investing around $70 billion in the design and development of its metaverse. However, it is unclear how this figure was calculated. 

In any case, the analyses also state that considering other unproven technologies that other tech companies have invested in in the past, Meta, with its $70 billion investment, would have far exceeded them all. 

Wanting to make a comparison, to design and create the iPhone, the first and true touch screen smartphone, Apple would have invested $3.4 billion. In this sense, Meta, with its metaverse, on the other hand, would have invested as much as 20 times to date what was invested by Apple some 15 years ago. 

The $150 million investment in immersive learning

In its super investment in the metaverse, Meta has reportedly dedicated $150 million for the immersive learning project, namely, making courses and teaching in the metaverse’s virtual campuses.  

From the news earlier this month, it appears that Meta is already ready to open as many as 10 virtual college campuses for more than 45 thousand students. To do so, the social networking company has partnered with Victoryxr, an American Virtual Reality (AR) company. 

The 10 college campuses will be the virtual correspondence of 10 American universities that have joined Meta’s initiative. Among the many is the University of Kansas School of Nursing, New Mexico State University, California State University, Alabama A&M University, and others.