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Tinder swipes right: eBay suit hooked up as new CEO

Chris Payne joins romp app as it tries to make money

Dating app maker Tinder has named its new CEO nearly five months after previous boss Sean Rad revealed to Forbes he had been fired.

eBay exec Chris Payne will be chief exec at Tinder, which is based in West Hollywood, California. Rad will retain his 10 per cent stake in the company, and his president title, but day-to-day running will be handed over to Payne.

Payne has worked at Amazon and Microsoft (where he was in charge of Live Search, now Bing) before starting up software company Positronic, which he sold to eBay in 2008. Payne confirmed his appointment on Twitter.

The shift comes as Tinder tries to make money from its hugely popular dating app that has introduced the vernacular "swipe left" into common usage.

The upstart created some controversy earlier this month when in addition to offering the ability to search for people in other cities, it also rolled out a tiered pricing model that charged over-30s double what it charged those in their early 20s.

That's far from the first time Tinder has provoked controversy. Most notably it was involved in a sex discrimination lawsuit brought by a co-founder who settled out of court for $1m and some stock, but also resulted in the letting-go of the company's CMO (her ex).

The app was also shown to be leaking user location data that would have allowed people to track others for months to within 30 metres.

In the Forbes article, Rad suggested that someone like former Google CEO and now chairman Eric Schmidt would want to take over from him. Hopefully Payne is sufficiently qualified in his eyes to take over from the 28-year-old. ®

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