I am developing this social media platform as a solo founder

[shannontkwong]

Hey everyone! I am a 19 y/o founder taking a gap year to build Airdel - a social media platform startup. I’ve noticed many of today's social media platforms aren't action-oriented nor optimized for real-time collaboration which is important for people who have personal goals, are working on impactful real-world missions and projects (Humanitarian events e.g California wildfire victims, Emergency healthcare deliveries, climbing Mt.everest, working on research/patents or even just building cool projects).

That’s why I’m building a social media platform that connects your needs with people who can help— whether it’s industry stakeholders, professionals, or individuals with a common solution to your problem.

Airdel contains a feed where you can post your mission progress, updates, and achievements, an online directory where you can search for needs and missions to collaborate and partner with others on, and a professional working platform with productivity tools to collaborate on missions until completion. The platform tracks the entire life of your mission/project from start to finish which is recorded on your personal profile. Collaborators can be anonymously reviewed, allowing others to judge trustworthiness for future collaborations.

People who have signed up are in the humanitarian, healthcare, tech, science, business, entertainment, sports and creatives sector needing specific urgent solutions, connections, and resources. These span from NGOs, Institutions, Individuals, Suppliers, Sellers, Organizations and government.

Let me know what you guys think! I will be answering every one of your questions. Shoot!

Landing page: www.getairdel.com Interested in helping out? Contact me [e-mail]

Best, Shannon

[verdverm]

Have you considered building it on https://atproto.com ?

[shannontkwong]

Although I like the idea of decentralization, the atProtocol is relatively new and still evolving. This means less documentation, fewer examples, potential API changes, and limited community support compared to established stacks.

Also as a solo founder, implementing a decentralized architecture adds significant complexity compared to traditional client-server models, which I would need to learn new patterns and deal with distributed systems challenges for.

[verdverm]

With ATProto, you don't have to implement most of the federation. For your project specifically, it would be called an "AppView" in atproto lingo. You would...

1. store public data in the user's PDS (an api call instead of a db call)

2. listen to the firehose for records created by other frontends to your AppView (optional, especially early on)

Otherwise, it would be quite similar to any other social media site with mobile apps, a backend, and a database

[shannontkwong]

Decentralization is definitely on my long-term roadmap for Airdel, and AT Protocol has some interesting benefits worth exploring. However, my immediate focus is on market validation and getting a viable product into users' hands quickly. As a solo founder, I need to be strategic with my resources.

Right now I'm prioritizing core functionality and user experience to test if we're solving the right problems. Once I've validated the concept and built a development team, implementing decentralized features would make more sense as we scale.

I appreciate the suggestion though - it's on my radar for future iterations when we have the bandwidth to implement it properly!

[andrewfromx]

are your mobile apps real native or using something like react native/flutter?

[shannontkwong]

I'm already done with the web app, and will do the mobile app version which I will use react native for!

[andrewfromx]

nooooo! use AI and make native swift and native kotlin. The mobile experience will be 100x better. And for a social media app it's ALL about mobile.

aider --model gemini/gemini-2.5-pro-exp-03-25

gemini-2.5 is the best in the world right now. Even better than claude 3.7 and it's free!

[shannontkwong]

Actually - not a bad idea! Thanks will note that down! Social apps live or die by their mobile experience, so prioritizing native development makes strategic sense.

[bigyabai]

Native mobile apps are a dying breed. If you want to make money, web is the only option and it's not even close. The margins on web-native content makes App Store money look like a joke.

It's a shame, because everyone loves native apps. But from a developer standpoint it is nothing but a waste of billable hours, a ritual where you kiss the ring of your respective platform owner so they can exploit your profitability. Skip Swift and Kotlin altogether, they're both tools used to hold you back as a developer.