The ACE Family is a YouTube channel that consists of three people Austin, Catherine and Elle. They live in Los Angeles, California and spend their time vlogging, doing pranks, and making videos of their two-year-old daughter, Elle, doing cute baby things. They take time out of their day and show their audience what goes on in their personal life, even the ups and downs of what they go through as a family. As of April 2018, the ACE Family has hit seven million subscribers and they are still continuing to grow.
The ACE Family community can be found on the platform of YouTube in multiple ways. One of the ways being the home or trending section. The home section on YouTube is where videos that have the viewers similar interest based on what they have previously watched can be found. Also, a more common way that the ACE Family community can be found is from other YouTubers giving them a shout out on their video. (1) Lastly, is by simply typing ACE Family in the search bar and it will be the first to pop up but that seems to be the route that is taken if someone has never seen family channels. The ACE Family community is so large that they can be found on multiple other platforms such as Instagram, Twitter, and Snapchat. On Instagram Austin and Catherine each have their own account and even Elle too, but it is run by her parents of course. (2)(3)(4)
This community can be accessed by anybody who has access to a computer and internet. Members have the option to just be a viewer which doesn’t involve having to make a YouTube account by connecting a Google account or they could be an active member who comments and likes the videos. I would have to make an assumption and say that the Ace Family subscriber list is mostly made up of women between the ages of fifteen to thirty as well as a very few men. I make this assumption because I randomly chose a few followers in Austin’s followers list and they are all women.(5) The reason why this channel attracts more of a female audience is because it is a family channel that contains videos of vlogs and their little girl which women seem to be more interested in. Although the views on their prank videos seem to be higher possibly because men are more likely to watch those.
The ACE Family community communicates and engages in multiple ways. One of the more common ways being the comment section on the YouTube video. Viewers have always been able to comment on a video in hopes that the creator will see which is very hard to achieve because some videos can receive up to 100,000 comments so they are constantly getting pushed to the end. The comment section is mostly filled with compliments, suggestions and overall support from the community. The photo I have included is of a comment made by a fellow member of the ACE family community congratulating the family for reaching seven million subscribers. The member continues talking about her own experience with the channel and how it began back when the channel only had 200,000 subscribers. In the other photo a member mentions how she constantly talks about the ACE family to her friends and continues to put the word out about the community so that it can keep growing.
There are a few negative comments that come from people who are not a part of the community but those tend to get deleted because of the negativity. The negativity then ends up on gossip websites that just focus on hating the video creators of the ACE Family.(6) Viewers also have the option to respond to comments in this case subscribers will communicate with each other. Back to other forms of social media, such as Instagram, when photos are shared the community shows their love and support in the comment section on all three of their accounts. Members have also made multiple fan accounts for the family that continue to support and help make the community grow. Twitter is another social media platform where members are able to view the families’ tweets and communicate with other members either by “tweeting” at them publicly or more privately with a direct message. (7)(8) The ACE Family community is based online and starting to make its way to the real world. The family has never had a meet and greet but is currently planning a charity basketball event that will happen in the next few months and the ACE family community is welcome to go and meet the family behind the camera.(9)
In 2016 YouTube announced that they will be adding a new feature to its platform known as YouTube community. It will allow the video creators to interact and express themselves with their viewers using text, images and more. Its purpose is to offer the creators more tools for them to connect more with their audience, beyond just the videos. The new feature can be found as a separate tab on the creator’s homepage for viewers to access. If a creator posts a text or an image the viewers may give it a thumb up or down, as well as comment just like the videos. The posts will pop up in the viewers “Subscriptions” feed just as new videos do, and subscribers also have the option to receive notifications when a creator has posted.(10) The family is constantly trying to connect with their community members by giving what they call a “post notification shout out” to one of their subscribers. At the end of every video they name someone that they picked from the YouTube comment section or from any other social media site and thank them for being subscribed and supporting their channel.
The ACE Family is a community that attracts young adults for entertainment purposes. The ACE Family community brings people together from all over the world who have access to the platform of YouTube. As a whole, online communities are created for this same reason, to create a place for people with similar interests to meet and interact without actually meeting in a physical space. Their features of interaction give members an opportunity to learn new things or get advice about the certain topic their community is for and possibly form potential friends.