While they will be unlikely to even know by sight who the fellow guests are among the bar's other denizens, once they get talking about their daily routines, recent purchases or latest crushes, all will become obvious. The guests are members of a growing online community of virtual diarists, called bloggers, who every day share with a waiting world of voyeurs their every thought, action and concern. Named for their online blogs - a contraction of the word "weblog" - they are purveyors of the latest craze to come out of cyberspace. Mostly written anonymously, blogs provide a chronological vent for frustrations, a platform for polemic and a sounding board for ideas.

There are said to be about five million bloggers in the world. Of those at least 12 reside in Hong Kong, creating a tight, diverse and vocal community of online friends who know everything about each other, except what they look like and their names.

At its simplest, a blog is a diary, or a vanity site that allows the author to do and say what he or she wants. Some blogs enable readers to interact with their host, but most are simply logs of the authors' activities. As bloggers naturally coalesce into communities of similar themes and styles, they also act as an information-sharing tool allowing visitors and hosts to pass on details about anything from the next rock concert to the meeting place for a political demonstration.

It is their facility as international notice boards that prompted University of Dayton (Ohio) Law and Technology director Jeff Matsuura to describe blogs as the most potent forms of mass communication yet devised. "Blogs can be, and are, used in commercial contexts - for instance major media companies now make active use of blogs," he says. "But blogs can also be quite useful for those with criminal intent. They facilitate access to information and they provide a means for timely, widespread communications. Those functions are critically important for good guys and for bad guys, thus blogs, like most other internet and web applications, provide a powerful tool for good and evil.

"Blogs can promote commerce, facilitate law-breaking, and serve as an essential voice of freedom for oppressed people," says Matsuura.

Blogs' potential to spread political dissent has not gone unnoticed by mainland authorities, either. On November 7 last year, third-year Beijing Normal University psychology student Liu Di known as "Stainless Steel Mouse" was arrested for posting comments critical of China's national security laws. While there are signs the 22-year-old is about to be released, she remains in prison and without charge. The mainland's morals have been outraged in other ways on blogs. Sex columnist Mu Zimei has caused a storm with saucy tales of multiple sex partners and regular orgies posted on her blog. A Sina.com survey of some of the 38,000 people who have logged onto her site reveals 18 per cent thought the 25-year-old's bedroom antics were "shameful". Hong Kong's small community of bloggers are no less outrageous. The most vociferous and outspoken resides behind the moniker "Hemlock". His daily rants against Hong Kong's establishment pull no punches and, he claims, are read by more than 100 people a day. With a journalist's attention to detail, he - or she - has become Hong Kong's very own Matt Drudge, the online gutter journalist who first broke details of Monicagate, as former United States president Bill Clinton's sex scandal with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. became known. "We're force-fed produce from a land of make-believe Cepa [Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement], Tung [Chee-hwa]'s inanities, Liberal/Democratic policies, not to mention popular culture, mass consumerism, etc - I vomit it up online and feel better," says Hemlock in typically splenetic fashion.

Hemlock's blog (www.geocities.com/hkhemlock) is a roughly put-together site whose front page immodestly likens its author to the great English diarist Samuel Pepys. Hemlock's entries typify the angry nature of many blogs, packed full of scintillating accusation and rumour, it is unlike many similar blogs in that the entries are usually considered and well-written. Political outpourings are not always welcome, however, and bloggers like Hemlock feel a need to maintain their anonymity. "Saying James Tien Pei-chun is an idiot is hardly controversial. I only go at people who are in the public domain - officials, politicians. Yes, I have been accused of the `cowardly anonymity', but the alternatives would be workplace problems or writing boring rubbish about hiking," he adds.

It is not only political rhetoric on a blog that can get you into trouble at work. In October this year Microsoft employee Michael Hanscom was fired for posting a photo of computers made by rival Apple being delivered to the tech giant's Redmond, Washington, headquarters.

Simon, editor of Simon World (http://simonworld.mu.nu) and the organiser of next Wednesday's Hong Kong Bloggers' Summit, as the blogging party of the year has been dubbed, says he keeps his identity a secret to avoid trouble at his workplace. "While I don't really write anything that could cause any problems, I would rather my blog wasn't known about by everyone in the office," says the 30-year old Australian expatriate who works for a large financial institution. "People have been sacked for what they put on their blogs."

Simon World is far removed from the irate world of Hemlock. Simon, one could imagine, is likely to be found watching the rugby down the Dickens Bar with a rowdy crowd of mates before going home to the wife. "I got into blogging because I was fed up with writing so many e-mails back to friends and family in Australia. It's more like an open letter to all my mates," he says. His party next week is likely to be full of surprises, if only because the people behind such blogs as the irreverent Gweilo Diaries (www.gweilodiaries.com), the ebullient Gekkeanna (www.gekkeanna.blogdrive.com) and the frenetic All Things Nekkid (www.nekkidben.com) are so different.

"I think that's one of the fascinating things about blogging," says Simon, whose affable online persona suggests he'd not really get on too well with the seemingly neurotic Kay, who fills the pages of United Bingdom (www.unitedbingdom.blogspot.com) with young female angst.