Paris Hilton has recently built a 300 square foot $325,000 house… for her dogs.

I’ll just give you a moment to let that sink in.

The two story building has heating, A/C, a black crystal chandelier, a balcony, and a nicely manicured lawn. Hilton designed it with the help of her interior decorator Faye Resnick.

Remind me again that we’re still knee deep in a recession and people are losing their jobs to cut-backs and homes to foreclosure.

Okay, right, thanks– we’re still there, it’s not just me.

While it shouldn’t surprise me that someone of Paris Hilton’s caliber is dropping over $300K on a doghouse and making headlines for it…it somehow still does.

Celebrity pet houses are nothing new, with websites like Beyond the Crate offering scale sized models of rich pet owners’ homes or classic buildings for somewhere in the $5,000-$30,000 range, but Hilton’s doggy palace certainly seems to top them all.

So, while other celebrities are dusting off dresses in their closets and selling their third or fourth homes in exotic locales, we have further proof that we can always count on Paris to buck trends and go for the tackiest option available. Hey, at least we can look forward to her newest BFF having to live out there in the inevitable next season of her show, right?

Within the last few days, a libel suit for the ages has broken out over nothing more than…a tweet. Yes folks, 140 characters of “what are you doing” goodness has turned into a $50,000 lawsuit between a Chicago resident and the property management company she used to rent from.

Horizon Group Management is going head to head with former tenant Amanda Bonnen over a tweet she posted regarding the state of her apartment. One of Horizon’s employees recently released a statement (whose tone is ambigous) saying, “The statements are obviously false, and it’s our intention to prove that. We’re a sue first, ask questions later kind of organization.”

So here’s what we know:

1. Horizon Group Management is already the number one example on the “Streisand Effect” Wikipedia page.
2. Jeffrey Michael did his company no favors with the above quoted statement.
3. The masses on the internet have, for the most part, found this to be more trouble than it’s worth for the management company and assume the company now wishes they’d kept their mouths shut and lawyers under lock and key.
4. Amanda Bonnen, whether telling the truth or not, will surely think twice about any tweet she posts ever again (though one source says she’s already shut down her account.)
5. The decision of this case will undoubtedly permeate the foundations of social media and networking as it make an example either out of the management company, or Bonnen herself.

Great points have been made across a number of blogs and articles about the legal aspects of libel, freedom of speech and whatnot (many are linked to within this article), but I’d like to focus on the literal absurdity of the situation.

If you read the complaint filed by the management group, you are able to read a string of Bonnen’s tweets, not many of which are particularly positive. If every company she complained about from Spirit Air to O’Hare airport to the City of Chicago, took up a suit against her, she’d be a full time defendant in the courts. And I doubt Bonnen’s twitter stream is all that different from millions of other Twitter users.

I realize Horizon’s case is based on Bonnen’s wording, that she’s directly accusing them of something they say isn’t true, but still. While I’m not condoning the use of Twitter as a place to complain or criticize, I have to wonder if it is really worth it for Horizon to go through with the suit.

If Horizon Management Group is lucky, the story will die down in a few days…but at the rate it’s spreading, that’s probably too much to hope for.

What are your thoughts property managers? Where does “clearing your name on Twitter” rank in your marketing strategy?