Don't worry too much. Life is like that. Had you taken care of this problem beforehand, I am pretty sure some other major problem would have turned up. When you create something new, you have to deal with 100s of problems. No one gets it right in version 1 itself. What you need to do is to be able to calmly work through all the issues that come up and think about what you can do to recover the traction your app initially seemed to be getting.
Your app is tricky because I can derive value from not when I install it, but when all my friends install it as well. This implies you guys should make it really really really easy for me to get my friends on it as well. Perhaps you can take my phone contact list and show all those users as my friends within your app the moment I install it, and send the other users an SMS (using twilio) or email if I try to interact with them using your app. This way you can disguise your cold start from the user and make it more useful to him from day 1.
Your app is tricky because I can derive value from not when I install it, but when all my friends install it as well. This implies you guys should make it really really really easy for me to get my friends on it as well. Perhaps you can take my phone contact list and show all those users as my friends within your app the moment I install it, and send the other users an SMS (using twilio) or email if I try to interact with them using your app. This way you can disguise your cold start from the user and make it more useful to him from day 1.