Following on from the recent brouhaha surrounding Gillian McKeith and Twitter, this weekend brings another example of how not to respond to Twitter comments in the shape of a threat of legal action against blogger Luke Bozier.

Luke tweeted his unflattering opinion of ex-Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s new web site, and also posted more detailed criticism of Tangent One, who are apparently responsible for the site, on his blog.

Shortly afterwards, he received the following message from somebody describing themselves as executive director of Tangent Communications plc, parent company of Tangent One:

I respectfully suggest you delete that tweet, issue no more similar ones and generally try to sell your products in a more professional way. I really don’t like the prospect of either a public slanting match or legal action, but if I need to protect my company’s business and reputation, I will.

This has resulted in Jack of Kent (aka legal eagle David Allen Green) repeatedly re-tweeting the original tweet and promoting the hashtag #OffTangent, which is now trending nicely in the UK.

Assuming the threat received by Luke Bozier is real, one has to wonder at a digital agency whose response to online criticism is to immediately reach for the threat of legal action.

If they had chosen to ignore Luke’s tweet, it would have been seen by those of his 1,000-plus followers who regularly check Twitter, and perhaps passed along by some of them. The overall effect would almost certainly have been negligible.

Instead they came out blustering and, just as happened with the @gillianmckeith account the other week, have whipped up a storm of virtual criticism.

I’m not sure these people really get how this “social web” thing works 😉