Wall Street is smitten with IAC’s online dating sites

Barry Diller’s IAC/InterActiveCorp’s Web dating sites had their first date with public shareholders on Thursday, and from all appearances, there should be a second date.

Diller’s Match Group, primarily comprised of Match, OkCupid, Plenty of Fish and, of course, Tinder, raised $400 million for Diller’s empire, valuing Match at nearly $3 billion. And IAC still controls 86 percent of Match’s stock.

The stock was a hot item, pricing at $12 per share and closing up more than 20 percent. Internet dating is a very big business, but the hookup app Tinder is the piece that really has Wall Street excited.

The online dating industry is expected to see growth of 4.2 percent this year to $2.7 billion in revenue, according to IBIS World. That’s respectable, and twice the rate of growth for the general US economy.

As you can probably guess, Tinder — the relatively new app — caters to the under-35 crowd and hence it’s currently a free app.

That said, apparently if you’re interested in unlimited swipes for $10 to $20 per month, you can add numerous features and swipe to your heart’s content. (You swipe right if you are interested and left if you’re not.)

Tinder is the fastest-growing property in the Match group by far. It already has 9.6 million active daily users, who spend an average of 35 minutes per day on it. It is believed that Tinder may have as many as 80 million users worldwide, according to estimates.

CEO Sean Rad typifies the brash nature of Tinder with its tag line: “Friends, dates, relationships and everything in between.”

The 29-year-old CEO was quoted in the British press on the eve of the IPO saying that a well-known supermodel was pursuing him for a date, and she called him “a prude.”

The interview turned bizarre when Rad said he believed that the definition of sodomy was being turned on by an intellectual woman.

We’ll see going forward if investors will swipe left on Rad being the face of a public company.