Dear Preethi,
What you said is absolutely right... I was also confused when I got in as a new member. Since I had already navigated through ammas.com, I found it easier to learn everything and pickup. So , my advice to you new ones, is to go through all the threads , select the ones you like and start interacting with the other ILs there.
Slowly you'll get to know many of them.
Now that you have lots of friends , you can pick and choose your friends.
Love
Latha