Kakao Reveals Development Journey of Social Audio App 'mm'… TF Organization and Tech Stack Details

The 8th session of TechTalk, an internal seminar by Kakao's tech organization, revealed the development process of the social audio service mm, which launched in June. In this session, seven developers participated as panelists to discuss the TF organization approach and technical challenges involved in rapidly launching a large-scale new service.

Challenges in Developing a New Service

mm is a new service launched by Kakao after a long time, organized as a TF (Task Force) to achieve quick results. Developers viewed the situation—launching a service with limited resources and time—as an opportunity to experiment with new architectures without the constraints of existing legacy systems. Key challenges included rapidly collaborating with colleagues they were meeting for the first time in a remote work environment, and frequent changes in planning and design.

Tech Stack and Architecture Application

mm attempted a technical approach different from existing services to handle real-time voice conversations and reaction processing.

• Server Architecture: Moved away from a monolithic structure by mixing micro-architecture and event-driven styles, designed with a multi-data source structure.
• Client Development: iOS was developed as a pure Swift project, introducing the latest libraries such as Moya and Kingfisher, and using tools like Sourcery to enhance code consistency. Android actively utilized Kotlin and Coroutines to resolve callback hell and optimize asynchronous processing.
• Voice Solution: Used the external solution Agora, requiring overcoming barriers related to English documentation and communication.

Organizational Culture and Future Plans

Developers stated that they minimized conflicts in the non-face-to-face environment through real-time communication via Slack and daily meetings. They also positively evaluated the ability to experiment with new technologies free from the legacy constraints of existing services. Currently, the mm TF is recruiting additional server, Android, and iOS developers to prepare for the expansion of voice-based services.