The answer is 'un blog' and the French have seized on them more enthusiastically than any other nation in the world.

By several yardsticks, the French are now more rabid bloggers than even the Americans, who invented them.

According to one recent survey, six million French men and women, or one in 10 of the population, have blogs or interactive, internet diaries devoted to their personal lives, thoughts, anguishes, loves and hatreds.

This figure, based on unchecked claims by French internet users, is regarded as a little exaggerated. A more conservative survey, by the respected media study company Mediametrie, puts the number of active French blogs at 3.2 million . . .

still proportionately far ahead of the United States and by far the largest number in any European country.

Why are the French such keen bloggers?

Sociologists and internet experts say that the form might have been invented purely for the French. The blog is an instantly published diary:

a newspaper written by oneself and devoted entirely to one's own actions and thoughts. What a godsend for an endlessly opinionated and obsessively individualistic nation (which, famously, reads very few newspapers).

"It is clear that in France we have very large egos and love to speak about ourselves, " said Loic Le Meur, one of the first French bloggers, and now European managing director of a blog-hosting website, Six Apart.

"If you look at Germans or Scandinavians . . . off-line and on the internet . . . they really don't talk about themselves." Eighty per cent of French bloggers are 24 years old or less. More than 50% are women . . .

mirroring the fact that girls and young women are more likely to keep diaries than boys or men.

"They are the information generation, born to computers, " said Pierre Bellanger, head of Skyrock, a radio station for the young which also runs France's, and Europe's, largest blog-hosting site, Skyblog.

"This is the first time that an entire generation has been able to talk to itself, without anyone else intervening."

One of the reasons why blogs are so popular is that, in France, everyone is his or her own political party.

All hopefuls in the presidential race next year, including the runaway socialist contender, Segolene Royal, have been obliged to join the 'blogosphere'.

Other celebrity bloggers in France include the ex-footballer Zinedine Zidane.

One of the most popular French blogs, outside France, is www. bonjour-america. com, launched by Cyrille de Lasteyrie to explain France to foreigners. The blog is also endlessly obsessed with Cyrille's hero, Clint Eastwood.

Some blogs clearly are hardly visited at all . One per cent of French blogs capture 80% of all visits. Who cares, so long as you can endlessly celebrate yourself?