Marketers may now have another viable channel in their brand’s proximal identity. Proximal identity refers to the name associated with a particular SSID and allows users to link their wireless devices to that name.
Similar to the way the Domain Name System (DNS) associates brand names with domain names and maps those names to IP addresses, the Wireless Registry, a new service that launched recently, allows users to register and claim names for their proximal identities. “For marketers and brands this is very important. This introduces a new form of brand currency,” says Patrick Parodi, CEO and cofounder of the Wireless Registry. “In the same way brands want to own their URLs, they’ll want the names associated with their wireless signal.”
The Wireless Registry could be the first of many services that allows users to invest in their proximal identities, much in the same way services like Moniker and Go Daddy provide access to domain names.
With the recent focus on privacy, many consumers could potentially make use of services like the Wireless Registry, and marketers may want to take note, as well, for their brands. “The Wireless Registry is a good example of a new way for individuals to take control of their proximal identity, the new frontier of privacy,” Jules Polonetsky, executive director and co-chair of the Future of Privacy Forum, said in a statement.
