Three years after it began considering the business, Microsoft finally announced the launch of its ad exchange.
The catch: unlike Google, Microsoft isn't running the exchange at all. Instead, it will simply put its own ad inventory into an exchange run by startup AppNexus.
Ad exchanges let advertisers place real-time bids for display ads that appear on various sites -- just as they have been able to do with search advertising since the early 2000s.
That's good for advertisers, as it creates serious pricing competition, but could cut into publishers' profits, which is why a lot of online companies have been slow to embrace the concept.
In 2007, Google bought DoubleClick and used its technology to launch an exchange for display advertising in September 2009.
Microsoft actually bought an ad exchange company called AdECN around the same time, but the exchange never showed up.
Instead, Microsoft announced that it would put its inventory into an exchange run by AppNexus -- which it invested in last fall --- instead. AppNexus was started by Brian O'Kelley, who sold his first ad exchange, Right Media, to Yahoo for $850 million back in July 2007
The whole deal is an outgrowth of Microsoft's changing strategy in online advertising. Back in 2007, Microsoft wanted to be a major player in the online advertising business, and spent more than $6 billion acquiring aQuantive to help it get there.
Perhaps it was all a bluff to get Yahoo -- which earned most of its money from display advertising -- to the negotiating table for a search deal.
Whatever the reason, Microsoft now seems content to sell ads on its own network of sites, rather than making a big play to be the advertising technology that drives the Internet.
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After talking to Conan a few weeks ago, and CNN's Piers Morgan last night, Biz Stone made an appearance on another mainstream media show today: Howard Stern. You can access the interview here. Unlike many of Stern's interviews, this one was mostly PG-rated. One of the most interesting tales revealed in the interview was the backstory behind Facebook's offer to acquire Twitter back in 2008 (the story is at the 16 minute mark in the interview). As we know, Facebook reportedly offered Twitter $500 million to acquire the company in the fall of 2008. Biz tells Stern that he showed up at work one day and Twitter employee Jason Goldman (who is no longer with the company) told him that fellow co-founder Evan Williams was waiting for him downstairs in a car. 
Jack Dorsey is in demand these days. The inventor of Twitter is 
