Releasing early did not fail for you - it showed you what was wrong with your product. If you had done all those tweaks in silence and expected to come out to a great roar of approval, how do you think you would have felt when faced with a great wall of don't-care?
You released, you saw what the problems were, and now you hopefully have learned from the experience, and can go in a better direction. Just be sure to evolve, do not scratch and try to start afresh.
Ehm, no. Releasing early did fail for us. The idea was not mature enough, the "puzzle" wasn't completed but we started developement and released too early.
Do you have numbers to prove that your idea is great? Having been launched for a while, it should be pretty easy to rearrange traffic data in such a way that it gives you a benchmark as to how relevant your idea is to people.
(Forgive me, but I like using numbers as a basis for decisions)
We know that idea is relevant because 1) WE find it relevant and 2) by the initial comments we are receiving from our users. Most are in love with the idea... but after that they feel let down. The problem is how the idea is executed, not the idea itself.
You released, you saw what the problems were, and now you hopefully have learned from the experience, and can go in a better direction. Just be sure to evolve, do not scratch and try to start afresh.