Twitter debuts hexagon-shaped NFT profile pictures

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A Twit­ter logo is seen out­side the com­pa­ny head­quar­ters in San Fran­cis­co, Cal­i­for­nia, U.S., Jan­u­ary 11, 2021. REUTERS/Stephen Lam

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PALO ALTO, Jan 20 (Reuters) — Twit­ter Inc (TWTR.N) on Thurs­day announced the launch of a tool through which users can show­case non-fun­gi­ble tokens (NFTs)as their pro­file pic­tures, tap­ping into a dig­i­tal col­lectibles craze that has explod­ed over the past year.

The fea­ture, avail­able on iOS to users of the com­pa­ny’s Twit­ter Blue sub­scrip­tion ser­vice, con­nects their Twit­ter accounts to cryp­to wal­lets where the users store NFT holdings.

Twit­ter dis­plays the NFT pro­file pic­tures as hexa­gons, dif­fer­en­ti­at­ing them from the stan­dard cir­cles avail­able to oth­er users. Tap­ping on the pic­tures prompts details about the art and its own­er­ship to appear.

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Like oth­er tech com­pa­nies, Twit­ter is rush­ing to cash in on cryp­to trends like NFTs, a type of spec­u­la­tive asset authen­ti­cat­ing dig­i­tal items such as images, videos and land in vir­tu­al worlds. read more 

The social media plat­form last year added func­tion­al­i­ty for users to send and receive Bit­coin. read more 

Sales of NFTs reached some $25 bil­lion in 2021, accord­ing to data from mar­ket track­er Dap­pRadar, although there were signs of growth slow­ing toward the end of the year. read more 

Pro­po­nents of “Web3” tech­nolo­gies like NFTs say they decen­tral­ize own­er­ship online, cre­at­ing a path for users to earn mon­ey from pop­u­lar cre­ations, rather than hav­ing those ben­e­fits accrue pri­mar­i­ly to a hand­ful of tech platforms.

Crit­ics dis­miss the decen­tral­iza­tion claims, not­ing that many of the ser­vices pow­er­ing adop­tion of those tech­nolo­gies — like the six cryp­to wal­lets sup­port­ed by Twit­ter’s NFT prod­uct — are backed by a small group of ven­ture cap­i­tal­ists. read more 

In a wide­ly cir­cu­lat­ed tweet after the launch, secu­ri­ty researcher Jane Manchun Wong high­light­ed one of those links, show­ing how an out­age at ven­ture-backed NFT mar­ket­place OpenSea tem­porar­i­ly blocked NFTs from load­ing on Twitter.

OpenSea did not imme­di­ate­ly respond to a request from Reuters for comment.

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Report­ing by Katie Paul; Edit­ing by Simon Cameron-Moore

Our Stan­dards: The Thom­son Reuters Trust Principles.

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