The biggest beauty product trend I can remember in my eight-plus-year career (and many more makeup-obsessed years prior to becoming a beauty editor) is BB creams. Just about every beauty company in the world spent the last 12 months formulating and then launching one of these tinted multi-taskers otherwise known as "beauty balms."

Then, a few months ago, I started hearing whispers among big players in the beauty biz about another hot skin care trend coming out of Asia -- a cream that would do the BB one better. The obvious name for such a product? The CC cream.

Skip ahead to find out what makes CC creams so special.

But CC isn't just an arbitrary name cooked up by a beauty executive with a preschooler at home. CC stands for "color correcting," because that's exactly what it's designed to do: even and brighten the color of your complexion. (Of course, that's the primary function of BB creams as well. But I digress.)

While the CC cream phenomenon is still in its infancy, Olay won the metaphorical race and launched the first one in the United States this October. And I think it's safe to assume that many companies will be following suit and coming out with their own CC creams in 2013.

After trying just about every BB cream available, I spent the last few weeks playing with the new Olay Color Correcting cream and as many of the best CC creams from Asia that I could get my hands on. And I'm breaking down the noticeable differences between BB creams and CC creams -- they're subtle, but they're there. Here's what you need to know to be a step ahead of the CC cream trend. You know, before a DD cream comes out.