A lot of people on HN are starting companies and trying to establish themselves with social media(twitter, facebook, etc.). This gives them the jumpstart they

A lot of people on HN are starting companies and trying to establish themselves with social media(twitter, facebook, etc.). This gives them the jumpstart they need to get their pages and handles running. People don't like to follow a handle or like a page that has very few likes. Getting those first 1000 followers or 500 likes makes a huge difference in the amount of people who actually end up hitting "follow" or "like"