Tinder’s board members have evidently been doing some soul-searching lately, and announced today (Aug. 13) that current CEO Christopher Payne is stepping down. Payne, who was hired as CEO in March, will be replaced by Sean Rad, one of the company’s co-founders and its current president. Greg Blatt, an executive at Tinder’s parent company, IAC, is the new executive chairman.
“I’m proud of the fact that everyone around the table had the maturity to look the situation in the eye and take action,” board member Matt Cohler said about the changes, in an interview with Re/Code. He wasn’t talking about the still-smarting embarrassment from this week’s Twitter tantrum, in which Tinder’s social media managers unleashed a stream of statements insisting that the app had been portrayed unfairly by a Vanity Fair journalist.
But no matter when the company decided that things with Payne weren’t working out—Cohler told Re/Code that everyone realized this a while ago, “a few months” after Payne started—there’s no better time to fire someone than right after a public relations disaster.