Tom Coates (technologist)

Tom Coates (born 19 July 1972) is a technologist and early weblogger based in San Francisco, California who has been writing plasticbag.org since 1999. He has written extensively about social software, the web of data, location services and future media distribution and launched the Fire Eagle location service for Yahoo in 2008.

Coates was educated at the Norwich School, the University of Bristol and the London College of Printing. He worked at the BBC running an R&D team for BBC Radio, and before that he developed the geo-coded online community UpMyStreet Conversations. He has also developed online communities for emap and was Production Editor of Time Out's website. His professional written work includes film reviews for the BBC, contributions to Time Out city guides and comment pieces on technology for The Guardian.

From late 2005 until 14 May 2010 Coates worked for Yahoo!, initially for the Tech Development team with Caterina Fake, Jeremy Zawodny and Simon Willison. and later as Head of Product for the Brickhouse product incubator.

Coates' weblog has won a number of Bloggies including Best European Weblog (2001 and 2002), Best Gay/Lesbian/Trans weblog (2001), Best British or Irish Weblog (2004 and 2005) Lifetime Achievement (2005). He also runs the online subcultural community Barbelith - initially inspired by the work of comic book writer Grant Morrison.

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