Dynamic User Interest Augmentation via Stream Clustering and Memory Networks in Large-Scale Recommender Systems

TL;DR

This paper introduces DUIA, a real-time, end-to-end method that enhances user interest modeling in large-scale recommender systems through stream clustering and memory networks, significantly improving recommendations for sparse-interest users.

Contribution

The paper presents DUIA, a novel dynamic user interest augmentation approach utilizing a gradient-based hierarchical clustering algorithm and memory networks, addressing sparsity and cold-start issues in recommender systems.

Findings

DUIA significantly improves recommendation accuracy for users with sparse interests.

DUIA enhances performance on long-tail items and cold-start scenarios.

Successfully deployed in Tencent's industrial recommender systems since 2022.

Abstract

Recommender System (RS) provides personalized recommendation service based on user interest. However, lots of users' interests are sparse due to lacking consumption behaviors, making it challenging to provide accurate recommendations for them, which is widespread in large-scale RSs. In particular, efficiently solving this problem in the ranking stage of RS is an even greater challenge, which requires an end-to-end and real-time approach. To solve this problem, we propose an innovative method called Dynamic User Interest Augmentation (DUIA). DUIA enhances user interest including user profile and user history behavior sequences by generating enhancement vectors and personalized enhancement vectors through dynamic stream clustering of similar users and relevant items from multiple perspectives. To realize stream clustering, we specially design an algorithm called Gradient-based Hierarchical Clustering Algorithm (GHCA) for DUIA, which performs clustering via gradient descent and stores the cluster centers in memory networks. Extensive offline and online experiments demonstrate that DUIA not only significantly improves model performance for users with sparse interests but also delivers notable gains for other users. As an end-to-end method, DUIA can be easily integrated with existing models. Furthermore, DUIA is also used for long-tail items and cold-start problem, which also yields excellent improvements. Since 2022, DUIA has been successfully deployed in multiple industrial RSs in Tencent and was made public in May 2024. Moreover, the thoughts behind DUIA, dynamic stream clustering and similarity-based enhancement, have inspired relevant works and have also been applied in other stages of RS.