Recently, ByteDance, the owner of TikTok, has sliced its “Party Island” project, a virtual social app launched in July this year, according to news media CLS. Party Island was taken off app stores shortly after launch, pending regulator’s approval. PingWest has confirmed the decision with a ByteDance employee who’s familiar with the matter.

The app was designed as an online virtual community,  allowing users to create their own customized avatars and hangout with friends, chat, interact and participate in virtual activities. Party Island was launched in the wake of “XiRang”,  a virtual social platform by Baidu. XiRang was described by Baidu as “the first Chinese-made metaverse product”, while Party Island denies any connections with metaverse, according to Global Times quoting ByteDance.

In the short months that Party Island lived, it only existed as a beta-testing app, and allowed limited users with invitations codes to log in. The app was taken off app stores in late July. Douyin, TikTok’s sister app began testing its in-app virtual avatar feature around the same time. The function, dubbed ZaiZai, lets users create their own avatars and take virtual selfies with friends.

Previouly, ByteDance launched Pixsoul in Southeast Asian markets in September last year. Similar to Party Island and ZaiZai, Pixsoul allows users to create customized 3D avatars with various effect and filters. Pixsoul’s performance is lukewarm, and hasn’t been updated since Jan 6, 2022.

ByteDance has long been known for it’s short video streaming apps, Douyin and Tiktok. Douyin, Tiktok’s sister app has 500 million daily active users in China, while WeChat has over 1 billion daily active users.