In an interview with News.com, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates has claimed that MSN Spaces has “close to a million people”, an amazing figure given the short length of time since the launch of the English speaking service, but he indicates that this figure may include the Japanese and South Korean services, which were launched earlier in 2004.

In the interview, Gates also indicated that blogging tools (we presume through Spaces) will be integrated into the next versions of Outlook and Sharepoint.

In a refreshing moment of honesty, Gates also spoke to the burn rate on the service:
“Now, with blogs, you always have to be careful. The decay rate of “I started and I stopped” or “I started and nobody visited” is fairly high”.