Attracting New Users at Root of Facebook’s NFT Ambition

By offering more ways for creators of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) to monetize their art or services, Meta is hoping to grow Facebook’s user base by attracting artists’ fans as well as a younger demographic, Meta Head of Commerce and Financial Technologies Stephane Kasriel told the Financial Times on Wednesday (July 6).

Despite the NFT price plunge and the declines and other fallouts in the overall cryptocurrency market, Kasriel told the news outlet that Meta is moving forward with its NFT plans and would not “in any way” adjust its plans.

Kasriel told FT that Meta wants Facebook’s 3 billion members and users of the company’s other apps to be able to collect digital collectibles. The company also wants the “millions of creators out” to sell and create on Meta’s platforms.

See also: Facebook Pilots Ethereum, Polygon NFTs with Select Creators

Facebook said last week that it was starting an NFT program with Ethereum and Polygon for select U.S. creators, with plans to add Solana and Flow, PYMNTS reported. The program enables some Facebook creators to connect their cryptocurrency wallets to their Facebook profiles and turn their NFTs into Facebook posts.

Meta’s NFT project also aligns with its metaverse plans, Kasriel told FT, and the company is looking into how NFTs could be used to sell “memberships” and “subscriptions” to creators’ content.

Read more: Facebook to Restructure Feed Around Videos to Take on TikTok

Facebook has felt the heat from rival social media platform TikTok, which has grown its user base faster than Facebook. TikTok’s vast brigade of influencers and their legions of fans have posed a threat to Facebook’s advertising-based business model, which brings in an estimated $118 billion a year, FT reported.

A redesign of Facebook inspired by TikTok is in the works that will restructure the feed around videos and make minor changes to the algorithm, PYMNTS reported in June. Facebook would become more of a “discovery engine,” which would rely on recommendations, similar to TikTok’s “For You” feed.

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