If you were bummed that you couldn’t show off your pricey NFT (non-fungible token) enough, then your prayers have been answered. Just as Facebook and Instagram start looking at bringing NFTs to their users, Twitter beat everyone to the punch. The social network lets you display your NFTs as profile pictures that are visible and verifiable across the internet. Twitter released the feature on Thursday after a testing period. However, it’s not all good news. Not all Twitter users who happen to be NFT collectors can display their digital possessions.
NFT and social media
NFTs are the talk of the town right now, with companies like Twitter trying to capitalize on the growing popularity of this digital form of art. There’s also plenty of NFT criticism going around, and it’s not unwarranted. These collectible pieces of art can be quite expensive. You’re not necessarily buying a JPG or GIF file that’s unique and valuable. You’re purchasing the bragging rights that you’re the true owner of that piece of digital art. In turn, those expensive NFTs can be used as a status symbol, which can add extra toxicity to social networks.
That’s not to say that NFT technology isn’t important or that it shouldn’t be part of the future of the internet. NFTs would work well with future metaverses where people might need ways to buy and sell certain digital goods and prove authenticity and ownership.
Before we even get to that, the first uses of NFT will come in the form of social status statements on social media. People interested in collecting and trading NFTs can use Twitter to show their collections to their followers. That might sound annoying to some, including crypto enthusiast and manipulator Elon Musk. But others might like it. I did say that NFTs come with side effects.
How to add your NFT as a Twitter profile
It’s not enough to figure out how to mint (create) NFTs or purchase them online securely to show them as Twitter profiles.
You will have to make sure that you own an iPhone or iPad, as only iOS supports Twitter NFTs for the time being. It’s unclear whether it’s a matter of security or whether Twitter just chose to target iPhone users first.
Moreover, you’ll need to be a Twitter Blue subscriber. That means paying $2.99 per month to access extra features, like NFT support.
Finally, you’ll want to go for NFTs that come in the form of static images. That includes JPEG or PNG files. Moreover, the NFTs have to be minted on the Ethereum blockchain to work on Twitter.
Since I mentioned security, you will have to connect your Twitter account to a crypto wallet. That is what opens the doors to your NFT collection. And Twitter supports only some crypto wallets for the NFT feature. That’s Argent, Coinbase Wallet, Ledger Live, MetaMask, Rainbow, and Trust Wallet.
Twitter is betting big on crypto
The good news is that Twitter is very interested in crypto in general. With NFTs, it wants to be the social network for the discovery, conversation, and education around NFT, blockchain, and crypto technology. That’s what Twitter’s Esther Crawford told The Wall Street Journal.
“Crypto is a key pillar of Twitter’s future. We want to support this growing interest among creators to use decentralized apps to manage virtual goods and currencies,” the exec said. “This is just still very early days for us, but we wanted to build something that was a utility for this community that they could start interacting with right now.”
