YouTube CEO, Susan Wojcicki, revealed this Tuesday that YouTube is working towards helping their creators connect with fans on the site through the use of NFTs. Here is a quote from their new blog post: “We’re…looking further ahead to the future and have been following everything happening in Web3 as a source of inspiration to continue innovating on YouTube.” She stated that it could be possible for YouTube creators to capitalize from emerging technologies such as NFTs in the future.
One development that may have inspired this NFT announcement is Twitter’s recent NFT integration feature. Users subscribed to Twitter Blue now have the option to put their NFT as their profile picture. This new feature enables users to verify their NFTs through the Twitter app by connecting their wallet. Verified NFT profile pictures on Twitter are now hexagonal instead of a circle, making them easy to identify. When you click on the NFT on Twitter, information pops up about the collection it is part of.
YouTube even mentioned that they have been watching another emerging trend: DAOs (decentralized autonomous organizations). This is interesting because YouTube itself is very centralized in nature.
Some other major corporations that have announced their interest in NFTs are Facebook, Microsoft, and TikTok. The popularity of NFTs has skyrocketed in the past year which is reflected in this Google Trends chart below. As you can see searches on the topic have recently hit an all time high.
As we continue to see NFTs become more mainstream we will likely see more major corporations join the conversation this year. Industries that are implementing NFTs at an increasing rate are gaming, music, sports, social media, food, and ticketing. We are excited to see how YouTube will decide to integrate NFTs on their site and how creators will be able to monetize the feature.
Article by William Long – Crypto and NFT Journalist for TechNeo
