With Twitch's Guest Star Tool, Streamers Can Invite Friends To Participate In Live Streams
Source: Twitch
Twitch announced Guest Star. The new tool allows streamer hosts to invite up to five guests to participate in their streams. Streamers can use the tool from the Twitch desktop or mobile experience and host and manage guests within Twitch Studio and other tools.
When streamers bring on guests, they can invite them directly or toggle on a setting that allows viewers to "raise their hand" to indicate they want to join. Twitch will then notify guests via a pop-up which will allow them to join and be part of the stream.
Guest Star also features several safety tools. Hosts have complete control of who is invited to join a stream; they decide whether guests can turn on their camera or audio-only, and hosts can remove guests at any time. Streamers also can receive notifications from Twitch of suspicious users. Then, they can see how long users have been a follower and view any past chat messages.
The feature is in testing with a small group of streamers, who are actively part of the Just Chatting category, which is the most popular category across Twitch. More streamers will be able to access the tool this fall by signing up for a beta, and then all will have access to it by the end of the year.
As the first official feature specifically built for the Just Chatting category, Twitch acknowledges a rising trend in more streams built around the talk show format where streamers answer questions, provide advice, interview others, or host game shows. This behavior has been happening on Twitch for a while but requires streamers to leverage third-party apps that sometimes can be challenging to set up or, in some cases, unsafe since they don't fully integrate with Twitch.
With Guest Star, Twitch makes it easier and safer for streamers to continue to host these types of streams and lowers the barrier for new creators to participate. Not only do I think this will drive more types of content to pop up across Twitch, but it will give streamers another way to interact and engage with their communities. It will also be a potential opportunity for brands to tap into those communities with branded streams.
Twitch has historically been a place for gamers, but over the last few years, specifically during the pandemic, its creator community and userbase have exploded and diversified. Just Chatting has significantly benefited from this and looks to be a key driver in getting more creators and users onboard the Twitch train.
