One of the UK’s most influential technology people this afternoon described himself as “gutted” after not receiving an invitation from Google to participate in the internet firm’s exclusive new Wave product beta.

“I signed up to take part in the beta months ago,” complained Richard Cooper. “I didn’t hear anything after that, and then this morning I read on the BBC website that Google were sending out invitations from 4pm UK time.

“It’s now nearly five o’clock and I’ve heard nothing. I’m gutted.”

The web content manager went on: “The Daily Telegraph listed me this week as Britain’s 23rd most influential technology person. You would have thought that if anyone was going to be invited, it would be me.”

A spokesperson for Google commented, “We would love to have invited Richard but unfortunately we only had 22 invitations and they all went out to the first 22 most influential people in UK technology. Richard was unfortunately just not influential enough on this occasion.

“Nonetheless, each of those invitations allows the user to invite five friends, so hopefully one of those recipients will be kind enough to ask Richard to take part in our beta trial.”

Richard Cooper is 38.