Aiming for simplicity, popular online video platform provider JW Player has introduced JW Live, a cloud-based, live streaming service for content providers. JW Live is meant to be an out of the box service that is integrated with the JW player and platform, enabling content providers to easily power up live streams for their audiences.

JW Live is the latest effort to popularize live streaming, a category receiving a lot of attention these days, primarily because Facebook is aggressively pursuing it with Facebook Live. JW Live is another example of how technology providers are positioning themselves to assist content providers in powering their own businesses, as opposed to becoming solely reliant on platforms like Facebook, YouTube, Snapchat and others which offer large audiences, but risk undermining control over revenue generation and loyalty.

JW Live is described as “Click, Shoot, Live” and meant for non-technical staff to be able to set up and run. It’s a streamlining of the multiple workflow steps ordinarily found in live streaming, so that even the smallest content providers can get into the live streaming game. JW Live offers a single dashboard to create a live stream, enter the event’s details and then connect the source stream.

Importantly, the stream can be simulcast on Facebook Live, so content providers can get the best of controlling their own experience while leveraging Facebook. In addition to real-time analytics, the video streams are transcoded into multiple resolutions and bit-rates for multiple devices and conditions. The video can also be auto-archived for subsequent on-demand viewing.

JW Live joins live services from other online video platforms as well as social platforms like Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and others. Given all of this, there’s little doubt that live streaming is going to become a far bigger part of the online video landscape.