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Sev­eral really smart investors have recently funded Tweet­Deck, an advanced twit­ter client. The mon­e­ti­za­tion in the con­sumer mar­ket is still an open ques­tion, as there are few bar­ri­ers to entry and sus­tain­able dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion will be hard to achieve.

What­ever the mon­e­ti­za­tion option, it can already be accel­er­ated and increased, by play­ing at the edge of the con­sumer and enter­prise mar­kets. Using the same prin­ci­ples I explained pre­vi­ously here and here, Tweet­Deck has a good oppor­tu­nity to ben­e­fit from a strong first-mover advan­tage and mul­ti­ply net­work effects. Let’s take it as an actual exam­ple to play the enter­prise mar­ket as a cat­a­lyst for reach­ing the con­sumer one.

So, Tweet­Deck should:

1. Imple­ment the API of Twit­ter clones for orga­ni­za­tions (just the lead­ers, like Present.ly and Yam­mer – with much cau­tion on the lat­ter, see my take on it)
2. Sell licenses for using these APIs to all clients or only the big­ger ones

As we’ve argued before, this would not add much to the exist­ing cost struc­ture, because it:

• is scal­able: imple­ment the APIs, do not cus­tomize at all, so very lit­tle cost to main­tain. Built in AIR so cross-platform from the start.
• is easy to sell: part­ner with the ven­dors and make the deal known. Tweet­Deck supe­ri­or­ity is estab­lished. Could even think of a white-label ver­sion for ven­dors, but I don’t think this will be nec­es­sary to make them advise Tweet­Deck as an advanced client or even as their main client (the client comes free with their offer­ing anyway).
• is easy to col­lect rev­enue from: no need for com­plex pro­tec­tion schemes. Large com­pa­nies have no incen­tives to cheat on this and will not try to pirate.

What kind of ben­e­fits are likely to fol­lows from this?

• New direct rev­enue stream: enter­prises won’t pay big for such an app, but with a sub­scrip­tion model, it makes a nice reg­u­lar cash flow (with angel round at under $500k, will be sig­nif­i­cant in the early days)
• Mul­ti­ply net­work effects adop­tion: enter­prises using Tweet­Deck for their inter­nal Twitter-clone will make Tweet­Deck known and used by employ­ees, a good pro­por­tion of which will start using the appli­ca­tion for their Twit­ter account as well and be mon­e­tized nor­mally. This will accel­er­ate the adop­tion of Tweet­Deck as the client of choice. These new users are by nature solvent.

This is a win-win for all the par­ties involved:

• Twitter-clone ven­dors focus­ing on the orga­ni­za­tions mar­ket: this will help adop­tion and sell­ing because it makes their own offer­ing much more valu­able. If they already offer a client (and nearly all do), they should focus on their core offer­ing and let Tweet­Deck han­dle this. They will never be able to com­pete and this is a waste of resources.
• Enter­prises: they want adop­tion, and Tweet­Deck makes using a twitter-like much more man­age­able. This will improve their ROI on any offer­ing they choose to use, and will be a no-brainer at the right price.
• Tweet­Deck: this post is focused on that.

Granted, it’s not your usual strat­egy, and it requires to dip into the enter­prise mar­ket. The usual road­blocks are the investors, who seem always scared by the enter­prise mar­ket. TweetDeck’s one can’t be com­pared to the “usual investors” though. In any case, the future devel­op­ments around Tweet­Deck will be fas­ci­nat­ing to observe.

UPDATE: Seems right on…