Popular social media platform, Reddit is testing out non-fungible tokens or NFT profile pictures on its platform. The feature would allow its users to set any NFT they own as their profile picture.
Just days ago, Twitter introduced a similar feature but only for Twitter Blue subscribers on iOS. Support for Android and web users would be rolled out later. The Twitter Blue subscription service is not yet globally available, which will limit the adoption of the feature to select markets such as the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
However, that has not stopped many crypto enthusiasts from setting a photo of their NFT as their profile picture, although Twitter does not yet provide any ways to authenticate with a user’s crypto wallet and verify the ownership.
As for Reddit, testing of the feature is in very early stages and has not been made available to public users on its platform. Started in 2005, Reddit is one of the world’s most popular social media platforms with around 430 million monthly active users and over 100,000 active communities.
It has so far raised a total of US $1.3 billion across seven funding rounds and valuing it at US $9.6 billion. The valuation has tripled since 2019 and nearly 74% of the funding announced within the past two and half years.
Reddit has been experimenting with various initiatives surrounding NFTs for a while now and has even set up a dedicated page for NFT related activities. In May 2020, it introduced cryptocurrency tokens for two of its communities and the tokens are based on the Ethereum standards.
Meanwhile, the enthusiasm among social media platforms towards NFT notwithstanding, NFTs have faced considerable backlash from the Web2 community and sections of the gaming community too. In fact, within 24 hours of Twitter launching the NFT profile picture feature, someone has created a browser extension that automatically blocks Twitter accounts that use an NFT profile picture.
So, like any new thing that is potentially disruptive, NFTs will be facing many backlashes from stakeholders and communities who consider it to be their rival. We hope the naysayers would eventually be overshadowed by NFT’s benefits to the creator communities and the social impact that some of the NFT projects are making.
