My Groupon Twitter Lesson

Sunday night while watching the Superbowl, I fired off a few tweets about Groupon’s ad mocking ethnic cleansing in Tibet.

palden gyasto
Palden Gyastso

Frankly, I’m a little more colorful on twitter than I am on this site and I’m not sure why. Here are the tweets that I fired off:

Hey @groupon, you suck. I don’t care what the deal is – you lost my business.

RT That Groupon commercial may actually inspire the Dalai Lama to give up a lifetime of non-violence to kick the CEO in the nuts.

I’ll bet @groupon placed a call to google tonight and asked if that 6 billion was still on the table.

It shows that @groupon is amateur hour. A real company wouldn’t think of airing those ads.

I fired those tweets off pretty quickly. I was angry. I’ve had Tibetan food. I like it. I’ve eaten Tibetan food with, Palden Gyatso,  a Tibetan Monk who had his teeth knocked out with a electric cattle prod in a Chinese prison. The next morning when I got my groupon emails I cancelled my account.

Yesterday, I got an email from a reporter at the Chicago Tribune. She had searched twitter for people’s reactions to the groupon ad and decided to contact me.  She asked if I’d be willing to be interviewed for an article she was working on. I agreed to the interview.

In today’s Chicago Tribune, I’m quoted in a story about Groupon.

Ryan McKeen, a 30-year-old from Connecticut, tweeted his disdain and unsubscribed from Groupon in protest. “I sat there and watched the ad and I was just stunned,” he said.

The lesson in all of this for lawyers is that people will read your stuff if you put it out online. Even after all I’ve been through with this site – it still surprises me when I get a reaction to something I write which happens fairly frequently. When I started this site, I assumed no one would ever read it. I never assumed it would have any impact.

Especially when you start blogging or using twitter it’s important not to think that you’re writing in a vacuum.

Ryan McKeen is a trial attorney at Connecticut Trial Firm, LLC in Glastonbury, Connecticut. In 2016, he was honored by the CT Personal Injury Hall of Fame for securing one of the highest settlements in the state. He is a New Leader in the Law. ABA 100. Avvo 10. 40 under 40 for Hartford Business Journal. He has been quoted in Time Magazine, the New York Times, Hartford Courant, Wall Street Journal Law Blog and the Hartford Business Journal. He focuses his practice on Connecticut Personal Injury law. He loves what he does. Contact him ryan@cttrialfirm.com or 860 471 8333

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