According to his resume, Barinek is an enterprise savvy data-head with a background in geology as well as computer science. We hope he'll be able to work some particularly interesting magic at Gnip, a company hoping to act as a ping server for the social media world. We presume that Barinek's enterprise background will be useful in scaling huge consumer tech infrastructure, not that his joining the team is any indication that Gnip is interested in an enterprise play.

Photo: We assume Michael is the brunette, from Barinek.com.

Lead by serial entrepreneur Eric Marcoullier (who sold MyBlogLog to Yahoo, among other deals) Gnip launched this summer with ambitious goals. A pure B2B endeavor with no consumer facing interface, Gnip is one of our favorite startups on the web today. We're excited to see what the company can do with Barinek's talents.