Ime Archibong, Facebook unofficial Black Leader, racial justice plan and the next big thing.

Who is Ime Archibong? 

Ime Archibong is Facebook's unofficial Black leader. He assumed this post a year ago and he is in charge of experimenting with Facebook's new product hits. Also, his job is to ensure that whatever product the company takes on would be a very successful one. Archibong took up this role when the New Product Experimentation (NPE) was launched a year ago. The task of the group is to build “new apps focused on giving people entirely new experiences for building community.” 

Despite the bond with other social media platforms like Instagram and WhatsApp, Facebook (FB) gets 98%  of its revenue from its advertisement. All efforts to create a skunkworks group that would help reduce its dependence on advertising alone prove abortive. In fact, the company had once created a Creative Lab Division but this was shut down in 2015. It is against this background that NPE was created and headed by Ime Archibong. 

Aside from handling the experimentation of products which is his major work in NPE, Archibong is also one of the important voices on Facebook. As such he has been clamoring for diversity and equality in the company. He is one of the persons whom Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook often turns to whenever he has an important decision to take for the improvement of the company. In fact, a report revealed that outside the office, Archibong and Zuckerberg are good friends. 

Archibong is the highest-ranking black executive in the company.

Over time, with the ongoing racial justice and movement against discrimination and segregation, the role of Archibong has become more central than ever. Being a prolific figure in the company and the unofficial leader Black employees working for the platform, a lot of people look up to him to instigate change in the marginalization of blacks in the company. 

Archibong contribution and efforts towards racial injustice

After the killing of George Floyd in the United State by a white policeman which inadvertently led to the ongoing movement against racial discrimination in the state, tech-based companies were lambasted for the diversity problem in their company. This became a hot topic in Silicon Valley. In fact, Facebook suffered its share when it was revealed that the company only has 3.1% black workers. Not long, the graphic video of the inhuman killing of Ahmaud Arbery went viral. In the midst of the razzmatazz, Archibong, who is not just a top black executive in the company but also the leader of black employees, came out to share his own experience and view: “A selfish silver lining of this pandemic has been the lack of anxiety I’ve felt running alone,” wrote Archibong. “In my head, now most people quickly shuffled to avoid me out of fear of a hidden virus, not my blackness. That was all snatched away this week as Ahmaud Arbery’s story and video surfaced. It hurts.”

As a dedicated black man in the company, Archibong has spent years in the company pushing for inclusion and diversity. In 2012, he created the Black@ group which was followed by the Black Community Summit in 2016. The summit is an annual event for blacks employees that typically include a talk from the Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s CEO or from Sandberg

In June this year, following the dissatisfaction of the public and other black workers in the company, Facebook revealed that it would increase the ratio of black workers in the company from the present 3.1% to 30% over the next five years. In addition to this, the company promises to donate $200 million to Black-owned businesses and organizations.

A former employee in the company revealed that black people in the company are more qualified than most whites. However, most of these black persons are not given the necessary promotions they deserve. One of the employees who was also a black man revealed that he left the job because he was repeatedly passed over for advancement.

In addition to Archibong's contributions to the plight of the black people in the company, last month he shifted some of the NPE employees to work on products bothering around racial injustice. The product is part of the initiative announced by the company’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg.

When some of the products were completed in mid-June, Archibong posted a screenshot of the submissions and described this as a “new space we built to elevate Black Voice and Stories... this was one of the more than 700 ideas submitted so far,” he wrote.

Archibong contributions to the development of NPE

When the NPE department was created, Facebook revealed that  it set up the NPE group because, “unlike Facebook’s family of apps, NPE Team apps will change very rapidly and will be shut down if we learn that they’re not useful to people.” The website also says, “We expect many failures.”

Like many leaders, Archibong has to face the challenges with startup social media platforms hungry and ready for a shortcut to start making profits.  According to a report on the performance of the group, it was revealed that if a team fails at a project, the team is simply reassigned within the company. As it is, NPE is yet to make headway. Although the team has launched a lot of products including Hobbi, which helps users track their progress on personal projects, Tuned an app specifically for couples and Bump, an app for anonymous users.

Sensor Tower reported that NPE apps have been downloaded 37,250 times with Tune making up more than half of the downloads.

Ime Archibong hails from Nigeria and studied computer science and electrical engineering at Yale. Later, he went to Stanford and obtained a  master’s in business administration. Before joining Facebook in 2010, Archibong was working with IBM.