The google chart is intl data vs hitwise entry which is US only data.
This explains the facebook anamoly (recent intl growth vs myspace and craigslist which have remained primarily us sites)
All of these analytics services have some bias.. Google only measures traffic to their site, whereas hitwise compares things in more relative terms.. I.e percentage of all searches (all search engines). Hitwise has an advantage because they collect data from ISP's, but the bias is that they don't collect data from all ISP's.
Anyway, I hope that helps to clarify.. And I still think techcrunch are full of shit. :P
Itβs no secret how bad Techcrunch is at gathering statistically relevant data about Internet traffic.
I'm thinking Arrington either didn't know he was comparing 2 different data sets (US vs. Worldwide) or he is trying to negate any bad press Facebook may get over the Hitwise data.
edit: this is the us only chart, which more or less matches hitwise data: http://www.google.com/trends?q=myspace,+craigslist,+facebook...