Zuckerberg, finally taking a shot at his biggest product, facebook, is exploring NFT and Web3.
On June 30, 2022, a Meta spokesperson tweeted that it has started testing NFT on Facebook for selected US creators running on Ethereum and Polygon. Soon, it will also add support for Solana and Flow NFT. Prior to that, Meta's Instagram started offering NFT to some users in May 2022.
NFT, or non-homogeneous token, runs on blockchains (such as Ethereum, Polygon, Solana, etc.), and each NFT is unique and immutable. NFT is essentially a piece of data that can be owned by individuals, rather than the current situation where all data is basically in the hands of Internet platforms.
NFT can take many forms. In the future, a Post on Facebook, a picture on Instagram, a piece of music you upload could be NFT. And unlike in the past, every NFT you post on the Internet comes with its own price, and it belongs to you. This innovation has overturned the current business model of the Internet from the bottom up. Internet entrepreneurs no longer seek to monopolize data and expand their scale, but to pursue the ownership of data by individuals, and the platform provides better services for people to trade and circulate data.
The failure of Libra, a Facebook-launched cryptocurrency project that sought to overturn the sovereignty of countries' currencies, taught Zuckerberg that aggressive strategies were unrealistic and would provoke a hard-line backlash from traditional powers. But zarazza's ambition has not gone away and he has opted for a more conciliatory approach.
NFT, the first step in the metadverse
How to take the first step in the meta-universe?
Some people choose AR and VR, some people choose Internet of Things, and some people choose Web3 (the next generation of Internet based on blockchain). As head of the world's largest Internet company, Zuckerberg has no choice but to take it.
Wang Miao, a doctor working in Meta, told Huxun: "The team currently working on NFT should be in Reality LABS." Wang Miao is a member of Meta. Although her doctoral research field is artificial intelligence and machine learning, she started to pay attention to Crypto and Web3 five or six years ago, and still keeps a strong interest in it till now.
He is not alone. In the US, it is not just Silicon Valley talent that is flocking to Crypto and Web3. Wall Street elites and SEC officials are also making Web3 their next stop.
NFT is one of the sexiest app tracks in Web3. Navdeep Singh, a Meta product manager, shared a look of NFT on Facebook on Twitter on Wednesday. Users will have an "NFT collection" place on their Facebook profile where they can display their NFT. NFT, which stands for your ownership of some data.
Users will be able to connect their cryptocurrency wallet to their Facebook profile. They can also turn their NFT into a Facebook post, which will still be liked, commented on and shared as before.
As far as apps go, NFT doesn't actually make Facebook any more fun, so why would Meta include NFT in both of its flagship products?
This may have something to do with the new qualities that NFT can bring to the Internet.
In the real world, people create a painting, and if the painting has great appreciation value, collection value or artistic value, it will be given a very high price by collectors, such as van Gogh's painting.
However, increasingly tired artists in the digital age, including but not limited to painters, writers, musicians and designers, prefer to create on computers. Many of their works are extremely valuable, and more and more great works will be presented digitally in the future. In a world where people spend more time in the virtual or meta-universe than in the real world, people, especially the Internet generation, have a strong need to create, collect and trade "digital masterpieces". NFT provides the best form of technology for this need, and will break the free state of everything on the Internet, inspiring great creators to create great work.
Facebook's entry into NFT is based on the fact that the natives of the Internet want to create, collect, trade and share in the digital world.
The meta-universe represents an inevitable trend in the digital age of mankind. Wechat, Douyin, taobao...... In fact, they are all "primitive versions of the metasurverse", representing the way people can chat, enjoy and shop online. If metasverse 1.0 was crude and only partially immersive, Metasverse 2.0 goes a step further and allows people to be more immersive.
People can do a lot of things that could not be done on the Internet (metasomes 1.0) before, through technological progress, can be done in metasomes 2.0. NFT is one such technology.
The contemporary Van Gogh may be a young man who works on a computer. What he creates is extremely subversive in art and humanity, and NFT can confirm his work and make his work unique.
Jay Chou of the new era is a young man who releases music works on the Internet. Its music will still be played for free, but the value of its first release, NFT, will rise as its music becomes more important. The natives of the Internet have a strong need for immersion in the metasemes. NFT can do that.
The meta-universe is a "reflection" of the real world. In the real world, people have economic systems, creations and collections, and each item is unique and has a price. Well, the same is true in the meta-universe. Digital currencies (FT) correspond to individual economic systems, while non-homogeneous tokens (NFT) correspond to each piece of work in the meta-universe.
Tencent's Q coin cannot replace digital currency, nor can any major company independently make unique and consensus NFT. This is the core value of blockchain, not big factories, not centralized institutions, not countries, it can.
The fusion of FT (digital currency) and NFT (non-homogeneous token) became Web3. Web3 is an indispensable building block for an immersive metasomes.
Meta's opponents
At present, the vast majority of American Internet companies have realized the importance of NFT and Web3.
Hu Xun wrote in his article "Web3" : Meta, Google, Amazon, Twitter, eBay, Netflix, Paypal, Square and other at least 8 American Internet giants paid practical actions to explore Crypto or Web3.
In particular, twitter, a social giant, has been the first to build NFT into its products, ahead of other Internet companies. And video giants like Netflix have experimented with NFT in several of their premium movies and TV shows, such as Stranger Things and Love, Death and Robots.
Many fans scoff at NFT, dismissing the technology as a scam, but the Internet giants know what they are getting themselves into. An investor once told Huxian: "A phenomenon product spread around the world very quickly, then to want a piece of the pie, is fantastic." It is for this reason that the Internet giants of the United States, China, And Even Russia and Japan, especially the social giants of China, Japan and Russia, have been laying out NFT.
For Meta, his competitors are not only traditional Internet giants like Twitter and TikTok, but the bigger threat is Web3 companies.
According to Husniff observation, there are more than ten Web3 social companies in China, and even more in the United States. They are the "natives" of the Web3 world and have a deeper understanding and exploration of NFT and other things. They are working on a completely different decentralized social graph from Meta, which may enable users to truly own their "social relationships" and autonomously transfer their social relationships to any platform.
Huxun found that in China, Ant's NFT platform Cetan and Tencent's NFT platform Unreal Core are also exploring social networking based on NFT network, but at present, the use of the whole NFT is too single, and the social function has not been online. The boring ape is not just an NFT, but a tight-knit social ecosystem. As more and more boring apes appear, the graph of relationships will be greatly enriched, and social products based on NFT may become possible.
Will Meta remain the next "social juggler"?