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The 27th day of January holds a special place in our hearts as it marks Vivaldi Day, the day we unveiled the first technical preview of your favorite browser.
Reaching any milestone is a big deal worthy of confetti, streamers, cake, and more! But we want to celebrate the day with our community.
Over the years, we have grown together, constantly listening, learning, and acting upon your valuable feedback. Your input has guided our journey, and we truly appreciate the strong bond we have formed.
So we decided to do exactly what we love the most – interact with our users.
We hosted an engaging Reddit session where our CEO Jon von Tetzchner answered a wide range of questions. Fun, serious, relevant, passionate, technical, personal — the session was a mixed bag of everything. It clearly shows how unique we all are with different choices and opinions. It reinforces our belief that Vivaldi should adapt to each individual, a philosophy that we stand by.
In case you missed it, here we are with the highlights – 9 years and 9 questions 🎉 :
1. Doctacosa: Hi Jon! The browsers world is pretty competitive and Vivaldi has the features to compete all right. Ultimately, where are the biggest friction points for the browser and the company itself? Visibility? Brand recognition? Working with Chromium? Something else entirely?
We are competing with some large companies that own the platforms we are working on. They control how easy or hard it is to find and install our browser and set it as default. The Digital Markets Act in Europe is taking on some of those issues and we hope it will make it easier for users to find us and install us. At the same time, we work on getting people to know we exist. We do not have the funding of Big Tech, so we rely on word of mouth. You can all help us there.
Working with Chromium is not trivial either. We spend a lot of time working on Chromium updates in particular. We need to merge our changes with any changes coming from Google.
2. CynicusRex: I love Vivaldi, I hate the overabundance of cars*. How much of Vivaldi’s income stream comes from car company partnerships? If you had to rely on a user subscription model only, how much would a monthly subscription cost to keep afloat, with no lay-offs, and a stress-free income for all your employees?
*I foresee car-free cities being increasingly adopted.
Thank you for your kind words! The cars help us grow. They help our revenues and they help our visibility. The revenue models we have work. The deals we have with search providers and the bookmark deals we have, they work. We just need to work on adding users. We do that by building great browsers for every device our users want to use. That also includes cars. Help us spread the word! That is the best way to support us. If you want to donate, you can do that as well, but really, for us to make the most difference, we need to continue to increase our user base. That gives us a louder voice as well, which is needed.
3. Bigduckrickk: Any plans for a lite version of Vivaldi with a few main customizations but not all of them Any plans for further enhancing in-build adblocker?
Feature request: Please add an option for a blank page as the homepage in both desktop and mobile versions & better adblocking options in mobile versions.
Love the browser !!
The thing is that every time a user talks about a lite version of the browser and they list what features they want to include, they include a lot of powerful features. What is important for one user is not important for another. We try to adapt to those needs and during the process of installing Vivaldi, we ask some questions which lead to Vivaldi presenting itself as a lite browser or as a more powerful one. You can then change those settings later, should you change your mind.
We will continue to improve the ad blocker, like every other part of the browser.
You can set a blank page today, but I am sure we can make it easier. We will look into that.
4. Groove_On: Speaking of advertising, the Super Bowl of football (and commercials) is coming up and I was wondering if you will be jumping out of a plane with a bright red Vivaldi parachute during the half-time show. If not that, maybe a 10-second TV spot? All the best to you and your team in 2024! -Sam (NeadReport on Mastodon, and proud Vivaldi Ambassador)
I think the cost of doing some kind of Super Bowl commercial is just out of our reach. Instead, we rely on you and our other Ambassadors and users to help spread the word. Thanks a lot for doing that!
5. Curious-Bed-8117: What do you think is the next big innovation in web browsers, and how is Vivaldi positioning itself to be at the forefront of this change
The big change right now is that we are getting browsers in cars. Every time you add browsers to a new device, you need to consider the possibilities available to you. Vivaldi has taken the lead here, just like we did with Opera on mobile.
6. Johnips918: First of all I want to thank you for making the best browser I’ve ever used and for supporting the Linux community. What are your thoughts on Snap packages? Will you support it?
Thank you for your kind words. We are big fans of Linux at Vivaldi and we do everything we can to support Linux. Recently we added Flatpak support after a lot of requests from users. Now we are getting a lot of requests for Snap as well. We aim to support the distribution methods our users want us to support, so we will strive to add Snap support as well.
7. lesserofthreeevils: Hi Jon. How many unicyclists do you currently employ?
There is one that is our main unicyclist, but others have proven themselves to be capable as well.
(Added context for those who find this intriguing, Vivaldi QA Ruari is one of the most prominent unicyclists in Norway and his love for one wheel has spread through Vivaldi).
8. Captaineer: Is there any feature in Vivaldi that is closest to your heart? Something that’s currently in or you wish was already in?
There are so many. I am a big fan of single-key keyboard shortcuts. I use them for history, mail, zoom, and the like. Fast and easy. I, obviously use the workspaces and tab stacks a lot. Sync, screenshots, etc.
I am also a big fan of the mail client and calendar and I use them a lot. Generally speaking, I always want us to continue to improve every part of the browser.
9. greenster: Will the Vivaldi browser also be available for Android TV in the future?
It is possible to run Vivaldi on Android TV, but there are ways we can get Vivaldi to work better there. We are always looking at ways to improve here as well.
And there were more! Pretty good ones, including a question about a Chipotle order. After all, it is an AMA 🙂 Take a look here.
If you missed out on the AMA, you can always reach Jon and the Vivaldi Team on Vivaldi Social and the forum. By the way, if you spend a lot of time on Reddit, there are some brilliant ideas on how you can make the most out of it with the Vivaldi browser. Read here.
Love Vivaldi? Introduce it to people who love to browse
We love being in the browser game. Many of your friends and family might be using a different browser other than Vivaldi. Let’s mark Vivaldi Day by reaching out to at least one person and introducing them to Vivaldi. Every user counts!
Ask them to switch to the latest Vivaldi version on desktop or mobile (Android and iOS) for a day or two, so they have a chance to get familiar with it. Once they see how easily Vivaldi adapts to their needs, they’ll be sold.
So if you love Vivaldi, this is the perfect day to share that there is a better way to browse – #SwitchToVivaldi.
Good luck and do share your success stories below, on the Forum, or Vivaldi Social.
Happy browsing!
