The latest articles on DEV Community by Yaska Haaji (@yaskahaaji). https://dev.to/yaskahaaji https://media2.dev.to/dynamic/image/width=90,height=90,fit=cover,gravity=auto,format=auto/https:%2F%2Fdev-to-uploads.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com%2Fuploads%2Fuser%2Fprofile_image%2F4103074%2Ffdcc3200-a7e9-4456-8b5a-a81b9e9e5e93.jpg https://dev.to/yaskahaaji en Yaska Haaji Mon, 31 Aug 2026 16:28:37 +0000 https://dev.to/yaskahaaji/i-built-goletalk-a-somali-first-social-platform-built-for-the-somali-internet-3jg3 https://dev.to/yaskahaaji/i-built-goletalk-a-somali-first-social-platform-built-for-the-somali-internet-3jg3 <p>I Built GoleTalk — A Somali-First Social Platform Built for the Somali Internet 🇸🇴</p> <p>I’ve been working on <strong>GoleTalk</strong>, a Somali-first social platform designed to give Somali-speaking communities a place to connect, share ideas, discover content, and explore AI in their own language.</p> <p>Today, I’m sharing the project with the developer community and would love to hear your thoughts.</p> <h2> Why GoleTalk? </h2> <p>Most major social platforms are built for global audiences, but Somali is still underserved when it comes to language-aware digital products.</p> <p>Somali-speaking users are already active on platforms like X, Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram. The opportunity we saw was to build a platform where Somali language and cultural context are not an afterthought, but part of the product from the beginning.</p> <p>That became the idea behind GoleTalk.</p> <h2> What are we building? </h2> <p>GoleTalk combines familiar social networking features with infrastructure designed for a Somali-first experience.</p> <p>Some of the areas we are working on include:</p> <ul> <li>📝 Posts and social interactions</li> <li>🔥 Personalized content feeds</li> <li>👥 Following and community discovery</li> <li>🔔 Real-time notifications</li> <li>📱 Flutter mobile applications</li> <li>🤖 AI-powered features</li> <li>🇸🇴 Somali-first language experiences</li> <li>⚡ Local data persistence and caching for better performance</li> </ul> <h2> The technology behind GoleTalk </h2> <p>The project uses several technologies that work together:</p> <p><strong>Flutter</strong> — for the mobile application and cross-platform development.</p> <p><strong>Laravel</strong> — for the backend API and core platform infrastructure.</p> <p><strong>Riverpod</strong> — for state management and application architecture in Flutter.</p> <p><strong>Isar</strong> — for local persistence and caching, helping us provide a smoother feed experience.</p> <p><strong>Firebase</strong> — for mobile infrastructure and services such as notifications.</p> <p><strong>OpenRouter</strong> — for experimenting with different AI models and building AI capabilities without being locked into a single model provider.</p> <h2> One interesting challenge: the feed </h2> <p>Building a social feed is more complicated than simply returning the latest posts.</p> <p>We are working on feed synchronization, caching, deduplication, optimistic publishing, and different feed experiences such as <strong>For You</strong> and <strong>Following</strong>.</p> <p>On the client side, we use local persistence to avoid unnecessarily requesting the same data repeatedly and to make the application feel faster.</p> <p>This has been one of the more interesting engineering challenges in GoleTalk because the goal is not only to make the feed work — it needs to feel fast and reliable as the number of users and posts grows.</p> <h2> AI + Somali </h2> <p>One of the areas I’m particularly excited about is AI.</p> <p>We want AI inside GoleTalk to understand Somali users naturally rather than treating Somali as an unsupported or secondary language.</p> <p>That means exploring:</p> <ul> <li>Somali-language AI interactions</li> <li>Somali content understanding</li> <li>AI-assisted discovery</li> <li>Context-aware responses</li> <li>Future AI tools for creators and communities</li> </ul> <p>There is still a lot of work to do here, but we believe Somali-speaking users deserve AI experiences built with their language in mind.</p> <h2> What I've learned so far </h2> <p>Building GoleTalk has taught me that creating a social platform is not just about building features.</p> <p>You have to think about:</p> <p><strong>Performance →</strong> How does the app behave as content increases?</p> <p><strong>Data →</strong> How do we efficiently synchronize local and remote data?</p> <p><strong>Architecture →</strong> How do we keep the codebase maintainable as features grow?</p> <p><strong>Community</strong> → Why would someone choose this platform instead of the platforms they already use?</p> <p><strong>Localization →</strong> How do we build for a language and community that has historically been underserved?</p> <p>These questions are shaping how we build GoleTalk.</p> <h2> What's next? </h2> <p>We are continuing to improve the platform, test with users, and learn what Somali-speaking communities actually want from a modern social network.</p> <p>The long-term vision goes beyond another social media app.</p> <p>We want GoleTalk to become part of a broader Somali digital ecosystem — combining social networking, AI, creators, communities, and businesses.</p> <p>I'd love to hear from developers:</p> <p><strong>If you were building a social platform for an underserved language community, what technical or product challenges would you focus on first?</strong></p> <p>And if you're interested in the project, I'd be happy to hear your feedback.</p> <p><strong>GoleTalk:</strong> <a href="https://www.producthunt.com/products/goletalk" rel="noopener noreferrer">https://www.producthunt.com/products/goletalk</a></p> webdev ai productivity testing