Part 1: Introduction
Zepeto’s launch was like a grand social festival that began with 3D avatars, captivating young people worldwide to download, explore, and share.
How did a simple 3D avatar-customization app evolve into a social platform with hundreds of millions of users?
Zepeto offers a virtual space for users to create and personalize their characters, interact with friends, join brand events, and even stage creative photoshoots.
Not only did it seize on younger users’ craving for self-expression, but it also delivered diverse scenes and features to meet various social-experience expectations.
From Zepeto’s meteoric rise, we see the vast potential of virtual social platforms: through real-time interactivity, immersive experiences, and a variety of social scenarios, they not only engage users but also effectively monetize traffic.
This article starts from Zepeto’s gameplay and commercial strategies, peeling apart the most common pain points and challenges in today’s virtual social landscape.
Next, it will discuss, in straightforward language, how real-time audio and video (RTC) solutions help virtual social platforms tackle these issues, including ultra-low latency transmission, network adaptation, security compliance, user retention, and monetization.
Finally, we’ll delve into the Weelife case study, exploring potential challenges, practical considerations, and risk controls in-depth.
Part 2: The Success Story of Zepeto
Zepeto initially attracted huge numbers of young users by focusing on a “face-pinching” gameplay (i.e., 3D character customization) paired with social interaction.
Its core features include: 3D character creation, clothing and scene changes, multi-user room interactions, as well as collaborations with offline brands.
On the gameplay side, Zepeto broke away from the typical “avatar” or “sticker” approach, instead delivering a fully visual, highly immersive experience.
Users can purchase clothes and accessories for their 3D avatars, generate exclusive animated expressions, and even snap photos together with other avatars online—boosting more interactions.
From a commercial perspective, Zepeto has partnered with major fashion brands to launch virtual attire, fueling user in-app spending while offering brands fresh marketing channels.
Its revenue model draws partly on paid virtual items and clothing while also pulling in brand collaborations, event sponsorships, and online performances.
Moreover, Zepeto strengthened its collaborations with celebrities and social-media influencers. Players can enjoy celebrity-inspired virtual items or even “meet” star avatars in Zepeto’s digital space.
All these strategies share a common thread: by satisfying users’ social needs and desire for self-expression, the platform reaps broad recognition and sustained user spending.
Zepeto has effectively created its own ecosystem in the virtual social sphere, establishing itself as a benchmark for large-scale profitability.
Part 3: Key Pain Points and Challenges
Despite the enormous potential of virtual social platforms, significant technical and commercial obstacles remain.
According to a recent market research firm, the global virtual social market is expected to surpass USD 100 billion by 2025, yet more than 30% of products see user attrition within a year of launch.
First is complexity in network environments. To ensure real-time synchronization of actions, expressions, and voice interactions in virtual social scenarios, the platform requires extremely low latency and high stability.
If network jitter becomes too heavy, the user experience suffers significantly—particularly crucial for gamified or interactive settings.
In addition to surging demand for low-latency performance, platforms also face compliance and security issues:
- Privacy protection: A massive amount of user data—personal information, voice, images—can be generated in virtual social environments, under ever-tightening regulation.
- Content moderation: If any illegal or inappropriate content emerges during live streaming or voice chats, platforms need effective monitoring and handling mechanisms.
Moreover, continuously increasing user engagement is no trivial matter. Virtual social platforms often skyrocket in popularity only to cool down quickly.
A lack of long-term operations strategy or having overly similar core gameplay may prompt widespread user drop-off once the novelty fades.
From ROI and monetization angles, the upfront tech costs—servers, CDNs, RTC integration, AI content moderation—are huge, yet returns can be slow and challenging to scale.
To survive long-term in a highly competitive virtual social market, teams must tackle product design, technical support, business models, and community operations in equal measure.
All in all, network transmission, user retention, security compliance, and revenue models intertwine, forming major hurdles for any virtual social platform.
Part 4: Solutions and Framework
To overcome these issues, the industry generally adopts highly integrated real-time audio and video (RTC) solutions alongside team-based collaboration.
This can be summarized as a multi-module, vertically aligned framework:
- Client-Side Collection
- RTC Encoding & Transmission
- Cloud Routing & Scheduling
- Encoding/Decoding & Data Processing
- Content Moderation & Security
- Final Delivery to Other Clients or Downstream Services
The first module, “Client-Side Collection,” emphasizes how to efficiently capture audio/video data, action commands, posture info, etc., and quickly encode it.
The second module, “RTC Encoding & Transmission,” typically uses low-latency protocols (e.g., UDP, QUIC) and intelligent distributed nodes to reduce network jitter.
The third module, “Cloud Routing & Scheduling,” leverages large-scale concurrency via CDN plus dedicated RTC channels for rapid forwarding, all while monitoring regional network quality to make real-time adjustments.
The fourth module, “Encoding/Decoding & Data Processing,” handles audio/video decoding for playback but can also perform secondary processing in the cloud—for example, mixing audio, voice recognition, AR overlays, or virtual avatar rendering.
The fifth module, “Content Moderation & Security,” is tightly coupled with real-time processing, requiring AI algorithms and business logic to intercept and record or flag violations.
Finally, “Presentation & Downstream Services” covers sending streams to viewers or other players, syncing voice interactions, initiating cloud recording, and data analytics—supporting subsequent commercial or operational uses.
Under this high-level framework, each module can further break down into specific tools or services: client SDKs, decoders, load balancing nodes, automated monitoring platforms, security review systems, etc.
Only by integrating these modules seamlessly, allocating resources efficiently, and optimizing continuously can we deliver real-time interactions across thousands of users in a virtual social environment.
In terms of project management and execution, each link must align properly, as any delay or failure in a single step can magnify user-end performance issues dramatically.
Accordingly, end-to-end monitoring and scheduling are crucial—visual tools can perform real-time analysis across the entire chain and dynamically route traffic based on different regional throughput.
Overall, the goal of this framework is “real-time, large concurrency, security & compliance, easy operations,” making it a best-practice approach for most virtual social platforms today.
Part 5: Representative Case (Weelife)
Weelife is a “virtual city” social platform aimed at young users. Centered on a virtual city map, it encourages users to hang out, meet for a meal, enjoy entertainment, and chat instantly with others.
When first launched, the Weelife team also struggled with low user retention, high network latency, and intense content moderation pressure.
They adopted the aforementioned RTC solution, connecting real-time audio/video SDKs and a cloud-based scheduling system to enable multi-person voice rooms, real-time motion capture, and virtual landmark events.
On low latency, Weelife set up servers at multiple nodes and leveraged intelligent routing to keep latency below 200ms, even for cross-continent access.
Regarding security/compliance, the content moderation system screens user-uploaded voice, UGC models, and text comments in real-time. Not only does it automatically filter sensitive info, but it also issues warnings or freezes problematic content.
Weelife also uses a customizable gamified engine, letting users create “micro-scenes” and invite friends for a shared experience.
Throughout this process, RTC’s voice connection feature provides the foundation for multi-user interaction, boosting communication efficiency and fun.
As a result, Weelife gathered millions of active users within just six months, raising monthly retention by over 15%, while attracting more advertisers and brand partners—enhancing ROI.
However, the Weelife team reminds newcomers: it’s important to protect user privacy and ensure cross-border data compliance, along with setting up redundant nodes to handle outbreaks of network volatility.
Only by planning various resiliency and security measures from the start can platforms avoid large-scale user experience blips or regulatory headaches once they scale up later.
Part 6: Implementation Steps
After reviewing the overall approach and example success stories, the next step is to implement.
At this stage, Tencent RTC, as a leading real-time audio/video solution, can often accelerate project progress.
Needs Analysis & Resource Planning:
Determine server node layout and bandwidth based on platform scale, type of interaction, and target regions.
Factor in peak user loads, security compliance requirements, and cost budgets to define initial network architecture and database design.
Integrating the Tencent RTC SDK + Advanced Customizations:
Incorporate multilingual versions of the RTC SDK on the client side, ensuring compatibility with various operating systems, devices, and network conditions.
Enable or disable related features (co-hosting, dynamic noise reduction, volume gain, etc.) as needed, offering users an optimal experience.
Deploying Backend Services & Real-Time Monitoring:
Build a cloud scheduling center that connects load balancing with multi-node servers, ensuring fast cross-region or cross-border access.
Use third-party or in-house monitoring tools to view real-time network latency, jitter, packet loss, and automatically redirect abnormal nodes.
Watch the security/compliance module, setting up sensitive-word filters, real-time review models, and emergency ban/freeze actions.
Following these three steps will help you quickly build a reliable—and user-ready—virtual social platform, enabling efficient operations and sustainable growth.
When applying Tencent RTC, consider two additional best practices:
Staged Testing & Progressive Release: Begin with a small user group to verify features and performance, and gradually scale up to full coverage. This reduces the risk of crashes or major bugs when the platform goes fully live.
AI-Powered Personalized Recommendations: Integrate real-time interactive RTC data with your platform’s recommendation system for insight into user preferences, delivering a more engaging and higher-retention personalized experience.
Part 7: Conclusion & Outlook
Looking back, we started with Zepeto’s success story, revealing the massive potential in the virtual social market.
We then explored the industry’s leading pain points—low-latency demands, compliance, security, user retention—and offered a holistic RTC-based strategy.
Through Weelife’s real-world scenario, we saw how to implement these solutions, the tangible benefits, and the risks and key actions needed.
Finally, practical guidance and best practices based on Tencent RTC were provided for teams aiming to swiftly catch up with the virtual social boom—feel free to contact us for further details on these solutions.
From a broader industrial perspective, as 5G and 6G proliferate and cloud computing and AI advance, virtual social scenarios will likely expand into areas like virtual business meetings, immersive education, and digital twin cities.
At that point, ultra-low-latency interaction based on RTC will go beyond simple voice and video, engaging user behavior tracking, AI engines, cross-platform ecosystems, and even metaverse-level content creation.
Hence, current attention to “real-time interactions,” “security and compliance,” and “massive concurrency” is not only vital for competition in virtual social platforms but also a strategic focus for the entire digital economy.
Whoever can ensure a high-quality user experience, expedite creative features, and build a sustainable ecosystem will ultimately lead the virtual social market.
How to Build a Video Live Streaming App Quickly
This guide will show you how to run the demo in 10 minutes and ultimately experience a video live streaming feature with a complete UI interface.
Step 1: Download the Demo
Download the TUILiveKit Demo source code from GitHub, or simply run the following command in your terminal:
git clone <https://github.com/Tencent-RTC/TUILiveKit.git>Open TUILiveKit’s Flutter project in Android Studio.
Step 2: Configure the Demo
Activate the TRTC service to obtain the SDKAppID and SDKSecretKey.
Open the file Flutter/example/lib/debug/generate_test_user_sig.dart and fill in the SDKAppID and SDKSecretKey you obtained when enabling the TRTC service.
Step 3: Running the Demo
In Android Studio’s top-right corner, pick the device on which to run the demo. Then click Run to launch the TUILiveKit Flutter Demo. Once it starts on your device, you can start and watch live broadcasts by doing the following:
• Log in & Sign Up: Enter your UserId in the “User ID” field. If the current User ID is new, you’ll be taken to the Registration page, where you can set your avatar and nickname.
• Start a Live Broadcast as Host: Tap the Start Broadcast button at the bottom center of the homepage to access the broadcast preview page, then click Go Live to begin streaming.
• Join a Live Broadcast Room as Viewer: Select any live room from the list to enter and watch. You can also link a mic to talk to the host.