Google chief calls Twitter “poor man’s email”

 Google chief executive Eric Schmidt has attacked micro-blogging social networking site Twitter, describing the service as a “poor man’s email”.

At the Morgan Stanley Technology conference in San Francisco, Schmidt said that while the success of the site was a good thing, the service itself is not very useful.

“Speaking as a computer scientist, I view all of these as sort of poor man’s email systems,” he said. “They have aspects of an email system, but they don’t have a full offering.”

But Twitter co-founder Biz Stone says the service is more reactionary than email. “We think it’s important to introduce the power of a real-time network to even the weakest of signals around the world,” he said.

“As Twitter grows, we realise it’s not about the triumph of technology, it’s about the triumph of humanity.”