In recent months a slew of trendy new websites have popped up, aiming to help consumers with their future shopping needs. No, not with daily deals, but with product and brand discovery. Sites like Fancy, Pinterest, Svpply, and CircleMe, to name a few, are deeply social but don’t try to connect consumers with one another and then try to show brand ads to all of them. Instead these sites offer platforms with which consumers can discover and display the art, books, clothing, brands, and technology they already love.

Today the Digital Lab hosted our second annual Demo Day, an all-day digital innovation and technology fair that sought to connect 21 of the most dynamic emerging consumer tech and interactive marketing startups anywhere with our staff at BBDO. The expo fostered a fun and creative environment where staffers were able to engage in meaningful conversations with these exciting innovators, opening up opportunities for future collaboration.

In this age of Twitter, we are now hungry for real-time information, an appetite which traditional news media is no longer able to satiate in times of trouble. Social media has stepped into fill that void, providing information and even assistance often before journalists can arrive on the scene.

ICANN’s Board of Directors approved a plan to allow an increase in the number of Internet address endings. Starting January of next year, companies and organizations can now turn their brands into Internet domain extensions such as .car, .sports or .bank. Will these new possibilities kick start companies' creative engines? Or will it get them scrambling to register their brands before someone else beats them to it?