Like
A Like is the Chatter engagement action that lets a user signal approval or interest in a feed post or comment with a single click.
Definition
A Like is the Chatter engagement action that lets a user signal approval or interest in a feed post or comment with a single click. Clicking the Like button records the user's like, raises the displayed like count, and adds that person to the list of people who liked the item. Each like is stored as a row on the FeedLike standard object, with one like per user per item.
In the user interface, Like sits next to Comment and Share as the lightest way to react in the feed. When you like a post, its author is notified, and you start receiving notifications about later comments on that post. Clicking Unlike removes your like and stops those follow-on notifications. Likes you receive also feed into your Chatter activity and influence statistics.
How the Like action works across Chatter
Liking a post versus liking a comment
Like works on two feed targets: the top-level post and the individual comment. The Salesforce Help guidance is explicit about the difference in what you get back. When you like a post, the person who created it is notified, and from then on you receive email notifications if others comment on that post. When you like a comment, only the comment's author is notified. You are not subscribed to alerts about further comments on that item. So liking a post is partly a quiet way to follow the conversation, while liking a comment is closer to pure acknowledgement. The interface shows who liked an item under the content, for example "Jane Smith likes this." When more than three people like something, a link appears that opens the full list of people, and from that list you can follow or unfollow them. Comments show how many people liked the comment, with names one click away. Both the post and the comment track their like totals separately, so a post can have its own likes while each comment underneath collects likes of its own.
The FeedLike standard object
Behind every like is a record on the FeedLike standard object. Useful fields include the record Id, CreatedById (the user who liked the item), CreatedDate (when the like happened), FeedItemId, and FeedEntityId. FeedLike captures current state rather than history. There is no separate row for an undone like; an Unlike deletes the FeedLike row outright. The one-row-per-user-per-item rule means a single person cannot stack multiple likes on the same post, and integrations cannot fake duplicate likes for one user. A detail that surprises many developers is how you read these records. You cannot query FeedLike directly in a standalone SOQL statement. FeedLike records are reached through the parent feed, such as NewsFeed, UserProfileFeed, or an entity feed like AccountFeed, by traversing the feed relationship. So reporting on likes is done from the feed object that owns the item, not by scanning FeedLike on its own. Knowing this saves time when you expect a plain SELECT to work and it does not. For most day-to-day reading of likes, the Connect (Chatter) REST API and Apex ConnectApi methods are the friendlier path.
Liking through the Connect REST API and Apex
The like action is fully available to code, not just to people clicking in the feed. In the Connect REST API (the Chatter REST API), a feed element exposes a chatter-likes capability. Issuing a request against that capability adds the running user's like, and a similar request removes it. Comments expose their own comment-likes capability, which mirrors the post behavior at the comment level. The response data tells you the total like count and includes details about the likes themselves, so an app can render the same "X people like this" experience that Chatter shows natively. In Apex, the ConnectApi (Chatter in Apex) methods provide matching calls to like and unlike feed elements and comments, returning structured like information. This matters for custom Lightning components, mobile apps, and automation that needs to drive engagement programmatically. Because the like count and the list of likers come back in one response, a developer rarely needs to touch the FeedLike object directly. Reading and writing likes through these APIs respects the same one-like-per-user rule and the same notification behavior that the standard UI follows.
Likes, activity stats, and influence
Likes are not only a social courtesy. They are an input to Chatter activity and influence. Salesforce describes Chatter activity statistics as including the number of your posts and comments, comments received, and the people who like or upvote your posts and comments. Those numbers roll up into an influence ranking with three tiers. Top Influencers lead collaboration by regularly sharing useful content. Active Influencers encourage others to take part and share knowledge. Observers are quiet participants or people just getting started. Likes received push a person toward the more active tiers, which is why prolific posters whose content earns few likes can sit lower than lighter posters whose content resonates. The practical takeaway is that likes are a visible vote that shapes how a colleague's contribution is recognized in the platform. For a community manager, the spread of likes is a quick read on which voices are landing. It also gives quiet but high-quality contributors a path to recognition without needing to post constantly, since one well-liked answer counts.
Likes in groups and reporting on engagement
Inside a Chatter group, liking behaves the same as in the main feed. Members can like each other's posts and comments, and those likes contribute to the engagement that group owners and managers watch. A lively group usually shows up as a steady stream of likes on member posts, while a quiet group shows posts with no reactions at all. For broader reporting, Salesforce supports custom report types built on an object's feed, letting admins monitor feed engagement on standard and custom objects that have feed tracking enabled. Liking, commenting, and viewing a feed item detail all count as interactions in views-and-engagement reporting, so a like is part of the interaction signal, not separate from it. Admins use this to spot the content patterns that earn reactions and the records or topics that generate discussion. The data helps coach people whose posts get little response and helps identify subject-matter experts whose answers consistently collect likes. Because likes are public by design, anyone with access to the feed can see who liked what, which is the normal expectation in a workplace social network.
Removing a like and the public nature of likes
Undoing a like is one click. Clicking Like again on an item you already liked is the Unlike action. The platform deletes your FeedLike row, lowers the displayed like count, and takes your name off the liked-by list. The change is immediate and quiet; there is no Unlike notification sent to anyone. Salesforce Help also notes that after you unlike a post, you stop being notified about later comments or likes on it, which reverses the subscription effect that liking the post created. Because likes are public, every like you place is visible to anyone who can see that feed item, along with your name. There is no anonymous like. This is the standard social-network model and is worth communicating to users who assume a like is private. For sensitive feeds, the right control is the visibility and sharing of the feed itself, not the like, since the like simply inherits whatever audience can already see the post. Treat a like as a small public endorsement, and the behavior around notifications, counts, and audience all becomes predictable.
Slack reactions and the direction of collaboration
Salesforce now recommends Slack as the place to collaborate across the Customer 360, and Slack uses emoji reactions rather than a single Like button. A reaction in Slack lets a person respond with any emoji, which is a richer and more expressive signal than the binary like that Chatter offers. Teams shifting day-to-day discussion into Slack trade the simple Chatter like for that wider set of reactions, and the two models do not map one to one. A heart, a thumbs up, and a checkmark in Slack carry different meaning, while Chatter collapses all positive feedback into one like. This matters for anyone planning analytics, because engagement built on Chatter likes and the FeedLike object does not translate directly to Slack reaction data. None of this retires the Like action. Chatter and its Like primitive keep working in Salesforce orgs, and feeds on records still collect likes. The point is direction: new collaboration investment is going into Slack, so when you design long-lived engagement reporting, plan for where the conversation is actually happening.
Trust & references
Cross-checked against the following references.
- Like Posts and CommentsSalesforce
- FeedLike | Object Reference for the Salesforce PlatformSalesforce
Straight from the source - Salesforce's reference material on Like.
Hands-on resources to go deeper on Like.
About the Author
Dipojjal Chakrabarti is a B2C Solution Architect with 29 Salesforce certifications and over 13 years in the Salesforce ecosystem. He runs salesforcedictionary.com to help admins, developers, architects, and cert/interview candidates sharpen their fundamentals. More about Dipojjal.
Test your knowledge
Q1. When a user clicks Like on a Chatter post, which standard object gets a new row recording that action?
Q2. What happens to the FeedLike record when a user clicks Like again on a post they previously liked?
Q3. Beyond simple feedback, what platform-level reputation value does accumulating Likes feed into?
Discussion
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