Readers may be familiar with his work developing a system he called "Tweetbacks," and later a full service TweetSuite of Twitter integration into blogging software. His other work includes tools that will instantly evaluate the likelihood of a blog post hitting the front page of Digg based on the words in its title and surveys on things like the words most likely to get your messages "retweeted" by other people on Twitter.

When analysts say that the media professionals of the future will also have more technical skills than they have in the past, Dan Zarrella is the kind of person they might have in mind.

It's a shame that those technical skills are put to use in schmarmy ways like systematically pandering for the favor of crowds on Digg and Twitter - but it's a new world and success in those places is widely desired.

Zarrella will fit in very well at Boston's HubSpot, makers of the high profile Twitter Grader, Facebook Grader and now HubSpot.tv sites. While other marketing firms claim to have expertise in "new media," that's where HubSpot truly has built a big reputation in the last year alone. ZDNet's Jennifer Leggio, for example, introduced the company's CEO in an interview this week with the words "HubSpot seems to be everyone's favorite marketing firm these days -- or at least the favorite of many."

Hiring Zarrella is likely to increase the company's profile even more.