Twitter Removes Guests to Improve Live Broadcast Quality

Twitter has removed the ability of users to invite guests when they go live in a bid to improve the quality of live video.

According to a tweet by Twitter Support, removing the invitation feature will improve broadcast quality at the cost of engagement. However, viewers still can interact with the host through the chat or add hearts by tapping on the screen. Twitter added the invitation feature in March 2020 so users could invite up to three other people to join a user's broadcast, although it was just audio.

Twitter has taken steps to improve its video quality prior to this update because users have complained about the site's compression technique.

In late September, Twitter Support announced it would work on making videos "less pixelated for a better watching experience." According to The Verge, this involved removing a processing step that broke videos into smaller chunks for easier storage, but at the cost of quality. Although some users have claimed to not notice any difference.

It’s worth noting that Twitter is still keeping its Spaces feature for live audio sharing. Spaces has a similar invitation capability, but it allows hosts to tag their live broadcast with three topics to bring in an audience.

In recent years, Twitter has tried out several new features and then removed them. A recent example is Fleets, the platform’s Stories feature that Twitter removed a little over a year after implementation.