Twitch Launches ‘Guest Star’ Feature So Everyone Can Start Talk Shows

Twitch is relying on a near future of the platform that incorporates more active dialogues, broadening its present focus beyond largely single streamers, with its biggest product rollout in years. Additionally, streamers can now simply invite other creators and fans into their streams for a talk show-like experience thanks to a new tool called Guest Star, which Twitch released in a restricted beta earlier this year. Furthermore, anyone can simultaneously broadcast up to five speakers thanks to Guest Star. The streaming applications of choice for many of the more experienced creators on the app are Twitch Studio and OBS, and creators can host and manage visitors from these platforms. Guest Star is now accessible to everyone and users can enable it through the creator dashboard. [caption id="attachment_58092" align="aligncenter" width="1600"] image credit: techcrunch[/caption]

More on Guest Star

Using Guest Star, streamers can tap chat participants to join or directly invite visitors. Another approach for streamers to encourage and thank their fans is to allow viewers to request to be featured in chat. In addition, users can join someone else's broadcast by clicking a pop-up notification and visitors can join with either video or merely audio enabled - a configuration that the host can determine and toggle on and off. [caption id="attachment_58091" align="aligncenter" width="1600"] image credit: techcrunch[/caption] On another note, with the use of moderation tools, hosts may control what visitors do. For example, they can set the volume of their audio, turn off their video, as we indicated, or even kick them out if they act inappropriately. And for hosts wanting to select chat participants to incorporate into a show, Twitch's suspicious user detection feature adds an additional layer of security. However, only phone-verified Twitch users can attend as guests as an additional degree of security, and a digital "backstage" area allows for the establishment of ground rules and pre-show coordination. Twitch envisions Guest Star as a natural evolution of the popularity it saw in the "Just Chatting" category, which has skyrocketed since 2020. The number of hours watched in the category increased by 151% over the first five months of 2022 compared to the first half of that year, and Just Chatting's creator revenue increased by 169%.