Zen ( rus, Дзéн) is a personal recommendations service created by

Yandex Yandex LLC (russian: link=no, Яндекс, p=ˈjandəks) is a Russian multinational technology company providing Internet-related products and services, including an Internet search engine, information services, e-commerce, transportation, maps ...

that uses

machine learning Machine learning (ML) is a field of inquiry devoted to understanding and building methods that 'learn', that is, methods that leverage data to improve performance on some set of tasks. It is seen as a part of artificial intelligence. Machine ...

technology. Zen creates a feed of content that automatically adjusts to the interests of a user. The selection of content is based on the analysis of

browsing history Web browsing history refers to the list of web pages a user has visited, as well as associated metadata such as page title and time of visit. It is usually stored locally by web browsers in order to provide the user with a history list to go back ...

, user-specified preferences,

location In geography, location or place are used to denote a region (point, line, or area) on Earth's surface or elsewhere. The term ''location'' generally implies a higher degree of certainty than ''place'', the latter often indicating an entity with an ...

, time of day and other factors. Zen has a weekly active user audience of more than 20 million.

Technology

Zen is an example of the implementation of a specialized artificial intelligence technology. To analyze the interests and preferences of users, Yandex uses information about sites that have been visited, as well as user-specified interests. The system analyzes the user's favorite sites and other behaviors with the aim of creating a unique model of the user's preferences. With an increasing amount of data about the user, the system can offer the user more relevant and topical content, including content from sources unfamiliar to the user. Zen adapts to the changing interests of the user. For example, if a user begins to read about

architecture Architecture is the art and technique of designing and building, as distinguished from the skills associated with construction. It is both the process and the product of sketching, conceiving, planning, designing, and constructing building ...

, content on this subject will appear in their content feed more often. Collaborative filtering

The service is available as part of the

desktop A desktop traditionally refers to: * The surface of a desk (often to distinguish office appliances that fit on a desk, such as photocopiers and printers, from larger equipment covering its own area on the floor) Desktop may refer to various compu ...

and mobile versions of

Yandex Browser Yandex Browser (Russian: Яндекс.Браузер) is a freeware web browser developed by the Russian technology corporation Yandex that uses the Blink web browser engine and is based on the Chromium open source project. The browser checks w ...

and in Yandex Launcher. Zen, Launcher and Browser belong to the “Discovery” technology category (services and apps that use artificial intelligence to adapt to a user). The technology that underlies Zen was adapted by Yandex and

CERN The European Organization for Nuclear Research, known as CERN (; ; ), is an intergovernmental organization that operates the largest particle physics laboratory in the world. Established in 1954, it is based in a northwestern suburb of Gene ...

for use in the

Large Hadron Collider The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the world's largest and highest-energy particle collider. It was built by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) between 1998 and 2008 in collaboration with over 10,000 scientists and hundred ...

. It is used to provide in-depth analysis of the results of

physics Physics is the natural science that studies matter, its fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge which r ...

experiments taking place at the LHС.

Media platform

In 2017, Yandex announced the launch of a platform that allows companies and independent authors to publish media content (articles, photos, videos) directly to Zen. The platform also allows popular authors to earn money by using micropayment channels and ads. According to Zen Media Director Daniel Trabun, the company plans to pay up to $1 million to the best authors of publications in 2017. Prior to the launch of the platform, Zen feeds consisted only of publications selected from publicly available sources.

History

In 1997, Yandex began research into

natural language processing Natural language processing (NLP) is an interdisciplinary subfield of linguistics, computer science, and artificial intelligence concerned with the interactions between computers and human language, in particular how to program computers to pro ...

, machine learning and recommendation systems. In 2009, the proprietary machine learning algorithm

MatrixNet MatrixNet is a proprietary machine learning algorithm developed by Yandex and used widely throughout the company products. The algorithm is based on gradient boosting Gradient boosting is a machine learning technique used in regression and class ...

was developed by Yandex, becoming one of the key components that Zen functions on. The first Yandex service to introduce the use of recommendation technology was Yandex.Music, which was launched in September 2014. This technology was then implemented in Yandex.Market and Yandex.Radio. In June 2015, a

beta version A software release life cycle is the sum of the stages of development and maturity for a piece of computer software ranging from its initial development to its eventual release, and including updated versions of the released version to help impro ...

of Zen became available. At first, the Zen content feed showed only content from the media, and the service was only available to the 5% of users of Yandex Browser on Android that had registered a Yandex account. Prior to this, Zen was available in an experimental form on the webpage zen.yandex.ru. In the following months, other types of content were added to Zen, such as image galleries, articles,

blog A blog (a truncation of "weblog") is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in reverse chronological order ...

forum Forum or The Forum (plural forums or fora) may refer to: Common uses * Forum (legal), designated space for public expression in the United States *Forum (Roman), open public space within a Roman city **Roman Forum, most famous example *Internet ...

s, videos from

YouTube YouTube is a global online video platform, online video sharing and social media, social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by ...

, etc. According to data from April 2017, Zen is available in more than 50 languages in more than 100 countries, including the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...

and

Brazil Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...

Management

The head of the Zen service is Dmitry Ivanov.

Finances

Zen is one of Yandex's experimental business activities. According to data from 2015, this segment earned the company almost half a billion

ruble The ruble (American English) or rouble (Commonwealth English) (; rus, рубль, p=rublʲ) is the currency unit of Belarus and Russia. Historically, it was the currency of the Russian Empire and of the Soviet Union. , currencies named ''rub ...

s in revenue. In Q2 2016, Zen and other experimental services brought in 153 million rubles in revenue to Yandex.

Monetization Monetization ( also spelled monetisation) is, broadly speaking, the process of converting something into money. The term has a broad range of uses. In banking, the term refers to the process of converting or establishing something into legal tend ...

of the service is due to ad blocks built into the news feeds (in

Russia Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a List of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia, Northern Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the ...

, ads are served by Yandex.Direct).

Competitors

After the release of Zen, several major companies also announced personal recommendation services. In May 2016,

Mail.Ru Group VK, known as Mail.ru Group until 12 October 2021, is a Russian technology company. It started in 1998 as an e-mail service and went on to become a major corporate figure in the Runet, Russian-speaking segment of the Internet. VK operates an e-m ...

presented a similar project called Likemore, which offers users content from VK (

VKontakte VK (short for its original name ''VKontakte''; russian: ВКонтакте, meaning ''InContact'') is a Russian online social media and social networking service based in Saint Petersburg. VK is available in multiple languages but it is predomin ...

) social media groups. In August 2016, Google launched a test version of a similar service that recommends news articles.

Apple An apple is an edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus domestica''). Apple fruit tree, trees are agriculture, cultivated worldwide and are the most widely grown species in the genus ''Malus''. The tree originated in Central Asia, wh ...

and

Facebook Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin M ...

have also launched news services with similar functionality.

References

{{Yandex, state=uncollapsed Recommender systems Yandex