IAC/InterActiveCorp (NASDAQ: IACI), which already owns dating website match.com, recently added another 10% to its majority stake in the mobile dating app Tinder. The purchase price was reportedly $500 million, valuing the start-up at $5 billion, not that far below IAC’s own market cap of $5.8 billion.
If you didn’t hear all about Tinder from the athletes who raved about it during the Sochi Winter Olympic Games, here’s how Bloomberg Businessweek described it:
It’s a pathologically addictive flirting-dating-hookup app. The first step in using it is to sign in with your Facebook ID, which gives Tinder your name, age, photos, and sexual orientation. There is no second step. You’re immediately shown the face of a person of your preferred sex, and, again, there’s only one thing to do: Swipe right if you like what you see, swipe left if you don’t. Another face instantly appears for appraisal, and then another.
The company and it’s app first appeared in early 2013 and CEO Sean Rad announced in early March that the company had just made its 1 billionth match — or maybe the more descriptive term would be ‘hookup.’ The company now claims 10 million daily users.
Tinder gains no income from its popularity, but it’s a pretty safe bet that monetization is not all that far away.
Shares of IAC rose nearly 6% at one point today but have pulled back to a gain of 3% to $70.40 with just over an hour left in Friday trading. The stock’s 52-week range is $43.30 to $80.64.
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