So you’d understand why people like me who don’t normally socialize with real estate agents in our personal lives would feel weird about “friending” an agent on Facebook without having met him/her in person and establishing some sort of relationship. Even now, as a homebuyer, I’m not going to search for agents to friend.

So it was especially interesting to listen to a panel for real estate agents about using Facebook as a professional tool.

(The FrontDoor team is in San Francisco this week for a real estate and technology conference called “Real Estate Connect,” hosted by Inman News.)

FrontDoor, for one, has a Facebook fan page (thanks to those of you who’ve joined it!) and is doing some interesting things with social media, such as integrate Facebook Connect on the site so readers can comment on articles through their Facebook profile.

At the panel, Craig Donato, CEO of online classifieds site Oodle, talked about their service, which would allow agents to automatically load their listings into their news feed and their friends’ feeds.  Someone in the audience quickly pointed out that that was the “fastest way to get me to de-friend you.” Indeed. I know I would.

So that begs the question — what is the proper etiquette, for any business, to build relationships on social networking services like Facebook and Twitter, without scaring away people? We’re discussing that here at Inman Connect. If you’ve got an idea, please share it!

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