Google CEO joins Twitter

Google chief executive Eric Schmidt, who took some flak earlier this year for calling Twitter a "poor man's email system," has joined the hot micro-blogging service.

Schmidt is "tweeting" under the handle @ericschmidt, a Twitter spokeswoman said in a Twitter message on Monday.

The Google's CEO's account was activated on December 1.

Schmidt has sent two "tweets," one of which was a link to an opinion piece he wrote last week in The Wall Street Journal, and has amassed nearly 7,500 followers in less than a week.

Schmidt made his disparaging remark about Twitter at the Morgan Stanley Technology conference in San Francisco in March but quickly backed away from the description in later comments, saying: "We admire Twitter."

"We think Twitter did a very good job of exposing a whole new way to communicate," he said.

Twitter's potential as a real-time search engine has sparked recurring bouts of speculation that Google may be interested in buying the company.

Twitter, which allows users to pepper one another with messages of 140 characters or less, has seen a dizzying surge in popularity since it was launched in August 2006.

(c) 2009 AFP