Company sues for tweet

The social networking platform Twitter is meant to be a place where you can express your feelings. But a company in the US thinks one Twitter user has said too much. The Chicago realty company Horizon is suing a woman who used to live in one of their properties – because she criticized them.

After Chicago tenant Amanda Bonnen allegedly had mould in her flat, she wrote on Twitter "Who said sleeping in a mouldy apartment was bad for you? Horizon realty thinks it's OK."

Horizon are so unhappy that they want $50,000 in damages from Amanda, and claims that its good name has been damaged because her tweet was published around the world. "The statements are obviously false, and it's our intention to prove that," Jeffrey Michael from Horizon told the BBC. However, Amanda only had 20 followers on Twitter who could see the message, so Horizon's decision could backfire. "If the public didn't read Amanda Bonnen's Twitter feed before, they will now thanks to the lawsuit," said Meg Marco of the consumer website Consumerist.com.