Betsy Newmark has been one my favorite bloggers for at least the past two years (just search my archives). But her Blogspot-based blog crashed earlier this week (apparently along with a bunch of other blogs hosted there), only to reappear today under someone else's ownership!

Betsy has a long letter on Instapundit explaining her situation that's must reading for any of her fans.

When I launched my blog in early 2002, I had watched numerous Blogspot-based blogs frequently go offline for hours at a clip (including, at the time, Instapundit himself). So I quickly decided that while I'd use Blogger's templates to put my site together, but actually having it hosted there would be counterintuitive. I had thought that since being purchased by Google, Blogger and Blogspot had gotten things together, and outages/crashes such as what happened to Betsy would be a thing of the past. Obviously, I was mistaken.

Update (11/17/06, 11:55 AM PST): Betsy has control over her Blogspot domain name again, but it looks like it will be a while before her blog is up and running again.

If I were her, I'd consider registering my own domain name and putting a Movable Type blog on a hosting site such as Living Dot. They've been great to work with--and are certainly cheap enough.