Yesterday, QUAKE LIVE announced that they now have a Player Invite System, giving players the ability to play with friends in private matches or in public servers. 

Player invites will become a common element of playing QUAKE LIVE with your friends, whether you are wanting a friend to join you on a publicly hosted server or are launching a server of your own — a feature we’re working to make available to all players as part of a QUAKE LIVE Premium Service.

In addition, a new premium service known as ‘Start a Match’ is currently in private testing and allows for leagues and players to start servers for other players to join. With this feature players have the ability to:

Start servers without passwords
Restrict servers by player invite
Specify a custom map rotation

Lastly, with all these updates coming out, there are also additional fixes and features to be included like:

Muting players
Relaxed spawn system
New administrative announcement system
Match browser optimizations
Nn update from Punkbuster
Firefox 3.6.3+ support
Backend optimizations

For additional information on the new update, check out the DevBlog.

Source: QUAKE LIVE