Natalie Tran, the “YouTube Queen”, ranks 88^th among the 100 most beautiful faces in the world, selected by Independent Critic.

She is above movie stars like Penelope Cruz, Isla Fisher, Naomi Watt or Hayden Panettiere.

The only standard used Independent Critic in the selection is a beautiful face. The selection covers Hollywood stars, singers and actresses from Europe and Asia.

Representatives from 75 countries are named in this list, including Natalie Tran, a Vietnamese Australian student, 24.

Natalie Tran’s mother and father left Vietnam to go to Australia in 1981, were originally a lawyer and literature professor respectively in Vietnam, became a postal worker and a public school teacher in Australia. Natalie Tran grew up in Sydney and taught for two years after high school before attending the University of New South Wales to study digital media.

As of July 2010, she had 238 videos available on her YouTube channel. The channel is the most-subscribed channel of all-time in Australia, the 22nd-most subscribed of all-time on YouTube, and the 6th-most subscribed director worldwide.

She is also the number one most-subscribed for the categories of Director and Partners for Australia, and manages the 45th-most viewed channel on YouTube of all time. She was the first runner up in the Miss YouTube contest created by Michael Buckley of What The Buck. Her first video was created on September 25, 2006. Natalie Tran blogs about awkward and humorous situations in her daily life, often involving skits.

She has more than 720,000 subscribers and more than 268 million views. This popularity has led to media coverage and appearances in The Sydney Morning Herald, Western Australia Today, B&T Magazine, Venus Zine, Der Spiegel, etc.

Her defense of Vegemite in response to a YouTube video by Ben Going was featured on the Australian television program “A Current Affair” on February 2007, as part of the Vegemite wars segment. Natalie Tran’s most viewed video had over 20 million views in March, 2010 and the number of views has grown significantly since then.

She has been recognized for her creative work and popularity on the Internet in various ways. She was one of the Australian YouTube celebrities invited to talk about the site at the launch of YouTube Australia in 2007. She is presently enlisted by The Sydney Morning Herald as a contributor and Real World Correspondent to their technology vlog Digital Life, complementing main presenter and journalist Séamus Byrne. Although her original skits are specifically written and created for Digital Life, they are produced almost entirely in the same manner and style as her YouTube material.

Natalie Tran was a presenter at “Creative Sydney” in May, 2009 at the Museum of Contemporary Art. She was nominated for “Best YouTube Channel or Personality” and “Funniest YouTube Channel” by Mashable in their 2009 Open Web Awards.

In 2010, the analytics firm TubeMogul placed Natalie Tran at No.10 on their list of top ten earners from YouTube advertising. According to TubeMogul, she earned $101,000 and had 138,871,829 views. In November of 2010, she embarked on a global odyssey sponsored by Lonely Planet.

Her videos include observational and self-deprecating humor, as well as stream-of-consciousness commentary on social dilemmas, such as how much money to spend on gifts for friends and appropriate telephone etiquette. Other videos include multi-role skits, where she plays most roles, combining multiple takes using split-screen composition. More serious topics have included Tran’s responses to the February 2009 Victorian bushfires.

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