Patent ID: 8862679

Claim:
A computer-implemented method for displaying a plurality of comments in a social networking application, the computer-implemented method comprising: presenting, by a server computer, a secret posted in the social networking application to a plurality of users, the users being members of the social networking application, one of the users being an author of the secret, the secret presented without revealing an identity of the author that causes the author to lose anonymity; receiving, at the server computer, the comments on the secret from a set of the users; determining, by the server computer, whether any of the comments are received from the author of the secret; responsive to a determination that a first set of the comments are received from the author of the secret, assigning, by the server computer, an avatar to the author of the secret, wherein the server computer assigns a common avatar to different authors of different secrets, associating, by the server computer, the first set of the comments with the avatar, and presenting, by the server computer, the first set of the comments to the users with the avatar, the first set of the comments presented without revealing the identity of the author; assigning, by the server computer and based on an avatar selection policy, a unique avatar from a plurality of avatars available at the server computer to each of a subset of the set of the users to generate a set of the avatars, the subset of the set of the users excluding the author of the secret; and presenting, by the server computer, one or more of the comments from each of the subset of the set of the users with a specific avatar from the set of the avatars that is assigned to the corresponding user, the one or more of the comments presented without revealing an identity of the corresponding user that causes the corresponding user to lose anonymity.