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InterActiveCorp (IAC) has just announced that it will divide up the media conglomerate into five businesses.

Reuters reports IAC will keep Ask.com, Match.com, Evite, Citysearch, and Excite, while spinning off its HSN home shopping network, Interval time-share business, Ticketmaster ticket service, and its mortgage referral business LendingTree.

IAC’s Barry Diller said, "We’ve been a complex enterprise almost from the very beginning 12 years ago, with hundreds of transactions over those years. And while we’ve created a lot of value, I’ve always believed our complexity and many mouthfuls of sentences to explain who we are and what our strategy is have hampered clarity and understanding with all our constituencies, particularly investors."

Sure, it makes sense to spin-off those units that don’t gel together, but it seems that IAC will retain a mishmash of companies: search, dating, invites, local. Not a whole lot of synergy there.

No, wait! I get it….

• Find a date on Match.com


• Check they’re not a criminal using Ask.com


• Find a restaurant for that first date using Citysearch


• Invite a few friends using Evite–in case he is a psycho


• Over dinner, reminisce about the days when people actually used Excite.

Makes perfect sense.

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