I’ve never approached this site as a “Social Network” and don’t know when or how it became one—maybe when someone at Apple listed it as such on the iPhone web apps page? I always thought it was intended as a resource: ask a question, get an answer.
I do enjoy some of the witty responses to comments, but other times, I find the back-and-forth within a thread to be intrusive – especially when it really doesn’t relate to the topic.
It seems as though the site simply evolved that way, because many of the original users knew one another, and many more have gotten to know each other through the site.