• printer friendly
• mail this article
• iPod format
• digg

Photo

Courtesy of Sizhao Yang

Former UCLA student Sizhao Yang started MyMiniLife.com, a Web site that combines Facebook-like social networking with real-life simulation like that of The Sims.

For most students, college is a logical step on a career path. However for former UCLA student Sizhao “Zao” Yang, college actually got in the way of his career goals.

After attending UCLA during the 2006-2007 academic year as a computer science graduate student, Yang left school and risked thousands of dollars to pursue his dream of creating a Web site start-up.

Yang is now the founder and chief executive officer of MyMiniLife.com, a free Flash-based virtual world and social network in which users “virtualize” and “miniaturize” their lives. MyMiniLife is a cross between sites such as Facebook and The Sims because it lets users create their own virtual world with a social networking focus.

The site has been online since August 2006 and now boasts over 250,000 registered users.

Yang’s idea for the site came during a dinner with friends in 2005. He was an undergraduate student at the University of Illinois in Urbana- Champaign at the time, and he and his friends began to talk about the “Web 2.0” boom of interactive Web sites such as YouTube and MySpace – as opposed to previous “Web 1.0” sites, which are not interactive.

“We realized that a lot of these social worlds have a problem where you have to download and install them,” said Yang. “We saw YouTube getting a lot of traffic, and their primary traffic was from people embedding them into their MySpace pages.”

As opposed to competitors such as those who use Second Life or Cyworld, MyMiniLife lets users embed their world through a Flash widget on other Web sites, such as their MySpace pages. This way, users can access their “minilife” through other Web sites.

While working on the site and attending UCLA, Yang’s roommate, Ian Yap, witnessed Yang’s dedication to the project.

“Because he was my roommate, I saw how hard he was working on this every day,” Yap said, who graduated from UCLA in 2007 with a master’s in electrical engineering.

The first launch of MyMiniLife in August 2006 was unsuccessful because it failed to draw enough users. After one more disappointing launch, Yang made a pivotal decision.

“I realized that at a certain point I had to quit school, even though I really enjoyed it,” said Yang. “We really needed to move to Silicon Valley.”

Yang’s decision to follow his dreams inspired his coworkers.

“It takes a lot of guts to do something like that. It was really inspiring to me and helped influence me to quit my job as well,” said Amitt Mahajan, who works full-time for MyMiniLife. “It changed my life in more ways than I can count.”

However, not everyone was thrilled with Yang’s decision to leave school. His parents and grandparents called him long-distance from China in an attempt to change his mind.

Even Yang’s father, who had always wanted to be involved in a technology startup, was upset with Yang’s decision. However, his father’s forgotten dream made Yang consider that he had wanted to create a startup since he was young.

“I grew up in an environment where a lot of people talked about (wanting) to do something, but never actually did it,” said Yang.

MyMiniLife slowly improved until it relaunched with TechCrunch.com, a blog-based Web site that covers Web 2.0 companies. That recognition allowed MyMiniLife to attract sponsors.

Currently, the target audience for the Web site is women between the ages of 18 and 24. Women comprise 70 to 80 percent of all users.

Users create and dress a “mini me” and then build a virtual “mini home.” This simulation can range from duplicates of users’ actual homes to fantastic creations, with the addition of walls, floors, doors and windows.

Users can visit each others’ homes, walk around, view pictures and videos and leave notes or chat real time with the owners. All items cost “money,” which users can earn by being active on the Web site.

Last Friday, the Web site launched an immediately popular new application that allows users to take pictures of real-world items and upload them to truly personalize their mini homes. This allows users to put more of their real life into their miniature life, which is the ultimate goal of the Web site.

“MyMiniLife has completely changed my life,” Yang said. “It is really important to go for what you believe in.”