When you think of GoPro, you think of one thing: Tiny, waterproof cameras that can be mounted almost anywhere. You think of skiers, skateboarders and adrenaline junkies leaping out of air balloons in wingsuits to capture the most extreme video you’ve ever seen.
It can’t be helped. GoPro is synonymous with action cameras, much as iPads are synonymous with tablets and Google is with search. But the company wants to be known for more than just its Hero-branded action cam.
As its brand has grown tremendously in the last few years, GoPro is transforming from a camera company to a lifestyle company.
“We think of GoPro as a movement,” company CEO Nick Woodman said. “It’s a content-driven movement that affects all of us. It’s a movement that’s enabling the highest-quality user generating content the world’s ever seen. It’s a movement that is driving higher levels of social engagement, social activity than ever before.”
GoPro’s latest action camera, the Hero 4 Session, is proof of that mission change. The cubed-shaped camera is 50% smaller and 40% lighter than the Hero 4 Black and Hero 4 Silver; GoPro didn’t design it to be the most performance-packed action camera, but to be friendlier and easier to use by the average person — the moms, dads and anyone who isn’t shredding the mountains or free-falling from space.
In early June, I was invited to take a sneak peek at the Hero 4 Session a few days before the GoPro Mountain Games in Vail, Colorado. Woodman was on hand to introduce the camera, but also to talk about the future of the company and where its headed.
GoPro is (and will be) known for its action cameras for a long time, but starting next year, the company’s surfing on new waves: VR, drones and an intuitive way for users to manage and edit all their GoPro content are the three pillars the company plans to erect as it builds its lifestyle cred — and stay ahead of the competition.
Virtual reality is the next stage
The most-talked about upcoming technology platform is virtual reality. Thanks to the Oculus Rift, Sony’s Project Morpheus and even Google Cardboard, which lets you turn your smartphone into a VR display, virtual reality has made its way into the public consciousness.
Whether it’s a VR headset, VR treadmill or gesture-based gloves, not a day goes by where I don’t hear about some company (big or small) working on VR.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said it best when the company announced it was acquiring Oculus VR, the company that single-handedly revived VR with the Oculus Rift headset, for $2 billion.
“This is really a new communication platform,” Zuckerberg wrote on a Facebook post. “By feeling truly present, you can share unbounded spaces and experiences with the people in your life. Imagine sharing not just moments with your friends online, but entire experiences and adventures.”
Google Cardboard turns smartphones into super cheap VR headsets.
Image: Mashable, Christina Ascani
The Oculus Rift may be designed for gamers first, but that’ll only be the initial offering. At E3 2015, Oculus VR Vice President of Product Nate Mitchell told Mashable that they’re targeting gamers first for two reasons. First, gamers are often early technology adopters and as such, they’re more willing to invest in the latest (and often pricey) hardware to get the most immersive experiences. And second, game developers are the best-positioned to create VR content, since they’re the ones who’ve had the most experience working withVR development kits.
“After games, we’re going to make Oculus a platform for many other experiences,” Zuckerberg wrote. “Imagine enjoying a courtside seat at a game, studying in a classroom of students and teachers all over the world or consulting with a doctor face-to-face — just by putting on goggles in your home.”
It’s these “other experiences” that will take VR beyond fad status.
“I think it’s real,” Woodman giddily told a group of reporters during a media dinner. “I don’t think it’s gimmicky like 3D.”
“VR is a whole new experience that can fully transport someone into another experience,” Woodman says. “The ability to promote empathy through VR, the better it is for people to have a human connection.”
That last part — the human connection — is what makes it so exhilarating to watch GoPro footage. Action cameras are but mere pieces of electronic circuitry, but seeing an incredible experience from a human point of view — that is the most valuable aspect.
People who will experience VR won’t care how many cameras are used or what kind of rig is required to shoot VR content. All they’ll care about is an immersive experience that elicits feeling.
“We are positioned more than any other camera company to enable VR,” Woodman said. At Re/Code’s Code Conference in May, Woodman unveiled a rig that houses six GoPro cameras, specifically designed to capture content for VR.
GoPro’s spherical array camera for recording VR uses six GoPro cameras.
Image: Screenshot: Code Conference
“It’s gonna happen. We’re making spherical cameras,” Woodman told me.
GoPro may be well-positioned to enable VR, but it’ll face competition from nimble camera startups like 360fly and Sphericam that plan to sell affordable 360-degree cameras that will be compatible with VR. GoPro won’t be able to waltz right in and own the space like it did with its Hero action cameras.
That said, Woodman remains very optimistic about VR’s potential. “It’s gonna open up all kinds of viewing experiences and expand the lifespan of content.”
Quadcopters and GoPros in the sky
Along with VR, Woodman said GoPro is keeping a very close watch on drones. In recent years, drones have become a phenomenon. Thanks to consumer-friendly (and affordable) drones like Parrot’s AR.Drone 2.0 and its many MiniDrones, drones have become more popular than ever before.
Privacy concerns and physical dangers aside, drones — particularly, ones with built-in cameras or can be equipped with a camera — are enabling amateur and professional content creators to get spectacular video content from high up in the sky without the need for helicopters or giant cranes.
For years, GoPro has played the nonchalant sidekick to drones such as the DJI Phantom, which easily mounts one of GoPro’s Hero action cameras.
DJI Phantom quadcopter with a GoPro Hero 4 attached to it.
Starting next year, that’s going to change. The sidekick will become its own hero (no pun intended) and cut out the middleman. GoPro is going to sell its own camera-equipped drone.
Woodman said he doesn’t like the term drone. He says people hear drone and immediately think of these autonomous flying machines that can go rogue and kill them. Woodman prefers calling them by their more technically accurate term: quadcopters.
“The [quadcopter] boom exists because of GoPro and now it’s growing much bigger than GoPro,” Woodman said. “People are getting into quads not because they like flying little quads around, but I think the original impetus is they want the incredible content that a GoPro and a quad enables.”
We don’t know what the drone looks like or how much it’ll cost, but Woodman said we’ll hear more about it in early 2016.
Into the cloud: Better content management tools
While new cutting-edge hardware gets all the attention, software remains a weak point for GoPro.
Woodman said he’s aware the company needs to do better in software— to better service the user. Because at the end of the day, all the GoPro footage in the world is useless if it’s stuck on a memory card, instead of being seen and shared with friends, family and the world.
Right now, editing GoPro content is tediously old-school. You record footage on your GoPro camera and save it all to a memory card. When you get home, you connect it to a computer and import the clips either manually and then into video editing software such as Final Cut Pro or Adobe Premiere or through GoPro’s Studio software.
GoPro’s free Studio video editing software.
That’s perfectly fine if you know what you’re doing, but a majority of users don’t or don’t have time to do so. They have no idea how to edit video and need something more automatic.
Woodman described a cloud-based service where users will be able to plug their GoPro cameras into a power source when they get home and all of their footage will automatically upload into the cloud. Users would then be able to edit and share their content online, presumably through some kind of web-based software.
You can already share bite-sized clips from, say, a Hero+ LCD to a smartphone and post to Instagram instantly, but GoPro is clearly dreaming bigger.
Building out a cloud-based platform like the one Woodman envisions will be an ambitious undertaking. The company will need massive data centers to store all that user content. It’ll also need to invest in ways of securing it all.
“GoPro exists to enable great content and great content enables GoPro,” Woodman said. “So it’s no surprise that we invest a ton of resources into enabling great content and making it easier and more convenient, and [Hero action cameras] lighter, smaller, more invisible, effective content capture solutions for our customers.”
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