The Huffington Post named Jimmy Maymann, formerly AOL SVP Head of International, CEO of The Huffington Post Media Group.

Aiming to enhance engagement, Spotify has rolled new tools allow users to follow music artists and other “influencers, and for finding new music. The Follow tab lets people get recommendations from their friends, musicians, celebrities and media outlets based on what they’re listening to. That includes everyone from Barack Obama to Katy Perry to media properties like People Magazine. Spotify has also introduced a Discover tab that promises to provide a feed of updates on new releases and shared music and playlists from artists and others people are following. They also get recommendations based on their listening history along with …

Too much of TV consumers' electricity bills are going to all those set-top boxes.  The Set-Top Box Energy Conservation Agreement projects believes new set-top designs could save about $1.5 billion a year in residential electricity. That also means four fewer power plants, eliminating an estimated 16 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions. Now, EchoStar Technologies, the subsidiary of EchoStar Corp, which owns Dish Network, says they are now committed to more efficient set-top design. They are joining a coalition of pay TV industry leaders, serving more than 90 million U.S. TV homes. …

Amazon is making its Kindle tablets even more family friendly, offering a new service, FreeTime Unlimited, that packages tablet-friendly books, games, educational apps, movies and TV shows, in on simple service.

Discovery Communications on Wednesday unveiled its latest original video show—DNews—available on YouTube, DiscoveryNews.com, Revision3.com and the platforms. Produced by Discovery unit Revision3, the new show offers an offbeat, irreverent take on science news, with three new segments a day hosted by Anthony Carboni, Trace Dominguez and Laci Green. DNews is the latest of more than 40 original video shows produced by Revison3 for Discovery across digital platforms.

Hearst Corp. has named Steven Swartz president-COO. Frank A. Bennack, Jr., continues as CEO. Swartz had been an executive vice president and was named COO of the company in March 2011. Before that, Swartz was senior vice president of the company and president of Hearst Newspapers.

What does 2013 hold in store for social media? Will another Pinterest emerge from obscurity? Will Facebook find its feet as a public company? As the prediction season gets underway, Jordan Bitterman, SVP, social-mobile-content lead at Digitas North America doesn’t weighs in with a trio of social trends to watch in 2013. In a blog post today, he foresees a comeback for community management, deepening ties between content and social, and a central role for social media in mobile. The post is the first in a series of five sets of predictions Digitas will publish in the coming …

San Francisco digital media indie Mediasmith has promoted Griselda Fernandez to vice president-media director. She joined Mediasmith one and a half years ago as a media director.

Doh! Canadians have once again bested (U.S.) Amercians in an important media industry innovation: Personalization of "The Simpsons'" iconic opening credits couch gag. To celebrate the 24th season of the longest-running scripted show in television history, Global Television, 20th Century Fox Television and Gracie Films are inviting Canadian fans to develop a unique concept for the "couch gag" segment, and will use the best submission in the Candian season finale in May 2013.

Commerce seems to be on the minds of cutting edge digital shops, and the big agency holding companies that own them. R/GA just recruited a top 1-800-Flowers exec to run its commerce initiatives (see earlier post), and now Publicis is announcing a deal between its Rosetta agency and IBM to do some really ambitious things. Stay tuned for some news analysis, but this is what Publicis initially has to say...