YouTube CEO says NFTs and crypto present a ‘previously unimaginable opportunity’
Expect to see NFT integration on YouTube in the future.
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A week afterTwitter added support for NFT avatars, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki has said thatcryptocurrencyandNFTspresent a “previously unimaginable opportunity to grow the connection between creators and their fans” on YouTube.
Wojcicki didn’t announce any specific plans to add blockchain functionality to YouTube, but calling NFTs an “opportunity” sure makes it sound like the site is working on something. YouTube head of gaming Ryan Wyattannounced todaythat he’s leaving YouTube for a blockchain company, as did senior director of creator partnerships Jamie Byrne (foradifferentblockchain company), so clearly others at YouTube are interested in cryptocurrency and NFTs. (Except in the extremely unlikely case that the departing Wyatt and Byrne were the only ones aside from Wojcicki who’ve been sipping on crypto hype.)
“We’re always focused on expanding the YouTube ecosystem to help creators capitalize on emerging technologies, including things like NFTs, while continuing to strengthen and enhance the experiences creators and fans have on YouTube,” Wojcicki wrote inan open letterabout YouTube’s 2022 plans. The site will likely elaborate on its blockchain intentions within the year, then.
Otherwise, a big focus of the letter is Shorts, YouTube’s answer to TikTok videos. Wojcicki announced that YouTube has recorded 5 trillion views of Shorts, and said that its teams are “working to make it even easier for creators and users to create gaming-related Shorts.” Also regarding the gaming category, YouTube is “focusing on better live discoverability and more chat features” and plans to add membership gifting functionality this year, Wojcicki said.
Along with Twitter and YouTube, voice and text chat network Discord once toyed with the idea of NFT integration, butsaid last November that it has no present plansto implement the ideas. As for NFTs in games themselves, we recently tooka look at current and upcoming projects, and there’s a whole lot more talk than anything else right now.
If a giant like YouTube gets into NFTs, though, I wonder if companies like Discord and big game developers won’t follow suit. It becomes a little easier to push through the backlash when you can point to an enormous company like Google and say, “Well,they’redoing it.”
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Tyler grew up in Silicon Valley during the ’80s and ’90s, playing games like Zork and Arkanoid on early PCs. He was later captivated by Myst, SimCity, Civilization, Command & Conquer, all the shooters they call “boomer shooters” now, and PS1 classic Bushido Blade (that’s right: he had Bleem!). Tyler joined PC Gamer in 2011, and today he’s focused on the site’s news coverage. His hobbies include amateur boxing and adding to his 1,200-plus hours in Rocket League.
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