I’ve been thinking about the headline of the Scoble post I addressed last week: “What do the freaking tech bloggers want?”

Specifically, does the periodic cuss word (or derivative) enhance storytelling or at the very least command attention?

I think the power of a cuss word can come from the element of surprise. If Martha Stewart drops an f-bomb while she’s baking brownies that’s going to grab your attention.

But the words “freakin” and “freaking” tend to be so overused today that they’ve lost their ability to jar. Rather than depend on gut feel, I turned to the wonders of the Factiva database to chart usage over the past five years.

You can see the two words have been gaining traction to the point that we’re projecting - I know the polls haven’t closed but go with me on this one - 7,122 articles will carry them in 2008. For context, Steve Jobs, who can hold his own with the likes of Britney Spears when it comes to media captivation, won’t show up in as many articles this year at the current pace.

Furthermore, I think it’s fair to say the words enjoy even greater use in the blogosphere. I couldn’t figure out how to search postings employing “freakin” or “freaking” by year, but a quick IceRocket search resulted in 122,923 hits.

Talk about overexposure.

Then again, with the right context the repetition of a cuss word can become a story in itself. For Exhibit A, look at Lee Elia’s meltdown back in 1983 when he was the manager of the Chicago Cubs. His profanity-laced tirade after the Cubs lost another game lives on in infamy thanks to the Internet.

Why?

It was so over the top for a public figure to spew expletive after expletive.

And yes, like all good stories it rang with authenticity.

Robert Scoble, the poster child for escaping corporate cubedom for the virtual pulpit, penned a post titled “What do the freaking tech bloggers want?”

It’s a convincing view.

A bit longwinded perhaps, but if “Scobleizer” is etched in your masthead, you get a pass to periodically pontificate.

An earlier Scoble quasi-rant emphasized that through customers, not the PR function, is the best way to share the latest cool thing with the rest of the world. This predictably led to praise and lambasts across the blogosphere, which caused Scoble to revisit the topic. The following line captures the gist of his latest take:

“Bloggers are being commoditized.”

He goes on to say:

“If we just go to press conferences, or only deal with embargoed news, and report on the same news everyone else is reporting on, well, then, just what reason is there for our business to exist? How will we build an audience that’s any different, than, say, TechCrunch or Fortune’s or ZDNet’s efforts? How will we justify to our sponsors that they should sponsor us as we are doing the same thing as everyone else? Especially if we have a smaller audience? Yeah, advertisers really love getting THOSE kinds of sales pitches. Imagine walking into a big company and putting up a Powerpoint that says ‘we’re the same as Techcrunch, but smaller.’ What’s the chances you’ll walk out with a sponsorship?”

Hard to disagree.

In short, great blogging depends on information not in the public domain.

This is a tough one for smokestack PR which revolves around public-domain content, a one-to-many model also known by that scientific term “mass blast.” The news release is the best example of information earmarked for the public domain.

I’m not saying the news release doesn’t have a place in outbound communications. For a range of reasons, not the least being public disclosure, the news release can be the right tool for the job.

But public-domain information doesn’t work for bloggers.

Back to Scoble’s point about being commoditized, bloggers need fresh stories, unique access and turf to navigate on their own; otherwise, how do they differentiate their offerings?

Which poses a problem for smokestack PR.

Storytelling takes time. 

And it’s not a one-to-many approach in the blogosphere. Instead, it’s about pulling together the right content and sources for a single blogger.

The ROI can’t be predicated on quantity (multiple bloggers).

The ROI comes from forming a genuine relationship with the blogger and one-off stories with the potential of being flung to the far reaches of the Net via the viral effect.

Scoble wrapped up his dissertation on what bloggers want from PR with an anecdote about powwows put on by Microsoft and EA:

“… That was really great because there wasn’t any pressure to report on anything, just a chance to get to know you, your team, and see some of the things you are working on. Same thing at EA last week. By providing experiences where we can get our hands on your products, meet your team, etc, we’ll discover new story ideas together. I found a few at EA that I would never have known about if they didn’t have an event where we could hang out for a day.”

We’ll discover new story ideas together. What a concept. 

One last point -

Tom Foremski from Silicon Valley Watcher spoke to our company about his transition from Financial Times journalist to independent blogger during one of our lunch-bucket sessions. When he opened the floor to questions, I asked about the volume of traffic on his blog.

Wrong question.

He didn’t exactly call me stupid, but with overstated calm explained that a blog’s audience should be measured by the quality of its readers. If 15,000 people with juice read his blog, that reflects a certain value in the content and justifies companies such as Intel ponying up sponsorship fees.

The blogosphere is a different world from traditional media.

As long as smokestack PR exists, we’re going to see the periodic dustups from Scoble and his brethren. 

With the fervor surrounding the Beijing Olympics close to its apex, any story tied to China gains some extra juice.

That’s why you see announcements like the one by IODA (the Independent Online Distribution Alliance) launching the largest digital music store in China timed to lead into the Olympics opening ceremonies on August 8.

Timing aside, IODA paints the classic contrarian story with an angle that never goes out of style, the quest for money.

At a high level, here’s how the IODA story flows:

• China just took the worldwide Internet user mantle, surpassing the U.S. with 253 million Web users at last count. To paraphrase Jed Clampett from The Beverly Hillbillies, “There’s gold in them there hills.
• But piracy has crippled the music industry in China. In fact, the largest search engine in China, Baidu, owes its king-of-the-hill status largely to pointing the Chinese netizen to links for downloading unlicensed music.
• Enter the Wawawa Music Store.
• Now, for roughly three cents per song, the Chinese consumer can download music.
• IODA and its partners generate oodles of yuan in the largest Internet market in the world, and at three cents a crack, I do mean “oodles and oodles.

The Associated Press ran with the story, which in turn drove coverage in the print media and the blogosphere. AP did a decent-enough job telling the story, equating the cost of the monthly subscription service to the price of a burger, fries and soda at McDonald’s

But it missed an opportunity to accentuate the relevance of the story to Americans and others around the world. 

Namely, why can’t anyone download songs at three shekels?

As I understand it, the Wawawawa (just felt like throwing in an extra “wa”) music is not DRM-protected to make downloading as easy as possible. What’s to prevent me from grabbing the latest track from indie band Woodhands?

Or if this isn’t possible, then why isn’t it possible? And how long before some enterprising acne-challenged kid codes a solution for the world at www.everyonecangetsongsforthreecents.com?

That’s the story I expected to read.

My last post lamented the lack of quality video earmarked for a B2B audience.

Which isn’t to say business videos are a complete wasteland.

There’s an eclectic blog called Valley Zen – promotes itself as the intersection of Zen and technology; I thought that was Nolan Bushnell’s dream with Chuck E. Cheese’s – that showcases a video interview with VC Tim Draper from Draper Fisher Jurvetson.

It’s good.

No, make that darn good.

Why?

It certainly doesn’t hurt to be comfortable in front of the camera. But there’s more going on here than a relaxed demeanor.

For starters, this isn’t your garden variety story from another VC headliner on why I’m rich and you’re not. Instead, you’ve got Draper kicking off the interview with his eyes closed and arms extended uttering the mantra: “I’m now at peace with my Zen.”

Very Californian.

From there you get to know a little more about Draper, his philosophies and how he defeated a cape buffalo in Africa.

Just as important as the storyline, no one is taking themselves too seriously. When was the last time you watched a dour guest on Oprah?

On the production side, it doesn’t hurt to have the professionals from Localfilms as your crew. Yet, there are lessons for the novice videographer such as breaking up the video in sections with stills and varying the camera angles.

Of course, if you’ve got dull people pontificating on a dull topic you’re going to end up with a dull video.

As my daughter would say, “Duh.”