JW Player was developed in 2005 as an Open source project.[2] The software is named after the founder and initial developer Jeroen Wijering.[3] It initially […]
JW Player was developed in 2005 as an Open source project.[2] The software is named after the founder and initial developer Jeroen Wijering.[3] It initially was distributed via Wijering’s blog. In about 2007 it was integrated into the advertising company named LongTail, which was renamed after the software in 2013. In 2008 a company, headquartered in New York, was formed which continued to develop and distribute the player.[4]
During the early development, before it was purchased by Google, YouTube videos were streamed by JW Player.[5][6] In 2015 JW Player was rewritten to reduce size and load time. Version 7 was licensed under the proprietary Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 license. It had integrated support for HTML5 Video and Flash Video,[7] allowing video to be watched on phones, tablets and computers. That year the company’s paying customer base grew by more than 40 percent to 15,000, 60% from the USA. 2.5 million websites used the free edition, playing about a billion videos per month.[7][8]
In 2016, the company released a new simpler-to-use version of its product, entitled JW Showcase.[6] JW Player continues to be used by many companies, including ESPN,[5] Electronic Arts and AT&T.