Just five months after his ousting, Tinder’s co-founder Sean Rad has returned as the company’s CEO after it was decided his replacement, Chris Payne, had failed to ‘ignite’ the business.
Sean Rad has, since March, remained the face of the app, despite news of him stepping down as CEO being revealed last November.
His removal from the position originally came after Tinder’s parent company, The Match Group, called for Rad’s demotion within the company, but now it appears he has done enough to earn his place at the top once again.
According to Re/Code, one of the members of the company’s board, Matt Cohler, said that Payne’s role as CEO had done little to benefit the company and it was time for him to move on.
“It became clear after a few months that it wasn’t going to become a long-term fit. It’s only been a few months, but everyone came to the realisation, the board and Christopher, and all agreed it wouldn’t work out long-term,” Cohler said. “Given that, we thought we might as well take action on this sooner than later.”
Dealing with Vanity
The decision couldn’t be timed any worse, however, given the recent media storm created by the company’s Twitter handle following the publication of a recent feature article by Vanity Fair looking at how technology has affected dating among younger people.
Tinder was one of the primary dating apps used by those interviewed, and the company’s social media manager sent a barrage of tweets to the journalist calling out her piece as being disingenuous and said it attempted to paint the app in a bad light.
Following his removal from the position of CEO, Rad was given the role of president of Tinder and had been leading the app’s product development and marketing during a time when it began rolling out Tinder Plus, the first attempt to monetise the app.
Following his brief stint, Payne said in a statement: “I enjoyed my time at Tinder but we mutually determined that this wasn’t going to be optimal and thought that a quick transition served everybody best. I think Tinder’s going to be an incredible company.”
Sean Rad image via TechCrunch/Flickr
