MySpace is no longer “the flavor of the month” among social networks because it’s too low-brow for the aspirational American populace, according to journalist Michael Wolff. He’s in a better position to know what News Corp is thinking than most: He published an extensive biography today about News Corp mogul Rupert Murdoch called “The Man Who Owns The News.”

Wolff goes into more detail about this classist idea in an interview with BusinessWeek’s Jon Fine, excerpted below,

But before I get into that, I think Facebook’s success is more nuanced than either Wolff — or Fine — imagine. People want to use the web to share information about things they care about, especially (for whatever reason) wealthier, better-educated people. Facebook does a better job of helping them do this.

Michael Wolff: MySpace. They [News Corp] know they have a huge problem. They’re quaking in their boots about MySpace. It always was a little rustling when I was there, there was this rustling—

Jon Fine: What do you identify as the problem?

MW: Facebook.

JF: OK. But Facebook is still smaller in America, and—

MW: Absolutely. But you know the rhythms of the Internet business, which I think are still, at this point, immutable. Something else comes along — a better technology, a better flavor of the month — and you, the former, are downgraded. Possibly to the point of being downgraded out of existence.

JF: I think there you are falling into a fairly common thing. Facebook — it’s a better experience than MySpace. [ed. my bolding] But the traffic on MySpace and the people on it…

MW: All of the growth now in MySpace is international.

JF: Sure. Because once you get to 75 million in the US, where are you gonna go?

MW: I know they recognize this: “We got to monetize this thing. We got to get this thing off the books”

To which I’d add: Facebook continues to grow in the U.S. — but especially around the world — while MySpace barely ekes out growth anywhere. MySpace supposedly had 118 million monthly active users worldwide in September, while Facebook had 161 million, according to third-party analytics firm comScore. (Note: The firm’s numbers are typically far higher than what the social networks themselves report due differences in measurement methods, although the proportionate size of each site’s traffic is likely accurate.)

Wolff attributes MySpace’s problem to class. Fine has already hit on a big reason why Facebook is winning, bolded above. Yet when Wolff compares MySpace to AOL, Fine says no, MySpace matters more because its users are more tightly woven based on their friend connections. Wolff says this isn’t enough.

JF: AOL was monodimensional in a way that MySpace is not. I don’t think that’s particularly debatable.

MW: I don’t think that’s true. I think it is — if you’re on MySpace now, you’re a [expletive] cretin. And you’re not only a [expletive] cretin, but you’re poor. Nobody who has beyond an eighth grade level of education is on MySpace. It is for backwards people.

JF: [unsuccessfully stifling laughter] I don’t mean to get all Murdoch’s-kids on you [an obscure reference to an earlier part of the conversation], but if you are in a band, you are on MySpace. You have to be on MySpace. That’s a powerful driver. And second of all — if I am to accept your reasoning, even though I don’t — as the success of [News Corp’s British tabloid] The Sun will tell you, there are lot of cretins out there, and you can make a lot of money off cretins. By appealing to their essential–

MW: No! That is the difference. And