Yandex Zen

» see zen.yandex.ru as it lived, on the wayback machine

~ the obituary ~

yandex zen sat inside the russian-internet feed economy. i was reading the english-language tech press from ankara on a ttnet line. the russian search homepage was not on my daily-use list. the way i learned the name was much later, through the september 2022 sanctions coverage that framed the sale to vk as the end of an era for the russian web.

the facts hold up clean. anyway, yandex launched zen in may '15 as a personalized infinite-scroll feed bolted onto the search homepage. the model was close to the toutiao shape, the algorithm pulled in news and long-form blog posts, ranked against your reading history. roughly. through the late 2010s zen turned into the biggest russian-internet content surface that was not vk itself.

either way, by march '22 the platform reported about fifty-nine million monthly readers. honestly, that number put it in the same scale as the major russian social brands. zen monetized through native ads and creator revenue share, russian-language journalists and lifestyle bloggers drew income off the feed. close enough. the platform was the closest thing the russian web had to a content economy built on top of a search-engine homepage.

this happened more in the russian internet than where i was, the sanctions context did the killing. either way, february '22 sanctions on yandex disrupted the company's western funding and ad rails. by april '22 yandex had announced the divestment of its news and zen properties to vk in exchange for delivery club. the binding agreement landed in august, the sale completed on 12 september '22.

~ the case file ~

~ the dzen rebrand ~

this part i was not close to. vk took over the zen brand on completion and renamed the product dzen, with the dzen.ru url replacing zen.yandex.ru. honestly, the same recommendation team and the same creator pool carried over. the rebrand was effectively a sign-change on the surface.

to be honest, the yandex.ru homepage redirected to dzen.ru as part of the deal, which made the old yandex search front-door look like a vk property in russian browsers. the yandex-era brand identity for zen ended that day, even though the product kept running with the same readers under a new owner. close enough.

~ the long tail ~

dzen kept running through 2023 to 2026 as a vk-owned property with creator monetization mostly intact. roughly. the brand-level death is the yandex-zen identity from may '15 through september '22, the seven-year window when zen was the yandex-search feed and not a vk product.

in fairness, the broader story is the yandex split. the company shed its russian-facing properties to a state-aligned buyer and reorganized the international holding under nebius in the netherlands. zen was the most public piece to change hands, the news service was the quieter second.

@}-->--

              )
             (_)
            .-'-.
            |   |
            |   |
            |   |
            |   |
          __|   |__   .-.
       .-'  |   |  `-:   :
      :     `---'     :-'
       `-._       _.-'
           '""""""

« previous  ·  random  ·  next »