This week we’ve shared the crowdsourced results of the question, “What is the biggest social media disrupter of 2011?” Here’s the final installment with more great opinions, ideas and even insights for 2012.

Tom Webster, VP of Strategy, Edison Research

I haven’t written about this much, but I think Google+ will eventually be a big disrupter. For what it’s worth, I’ve posted 15,000 times on Twitter and have 6,500 followers. I’ve posted about 50 times on Google+, yet I seem to have over 3,000 followers, and not as much Twitter duplication as I would have thought. So, something is bubbling up there. Yes, it’s about as much fun as a spreadsheet, but you can’t ignore its tight integration with the rest of the Google suite of apps. It’s also a much more natural place for businesses to stake out a social space (I don’t want a lot of brands and products mucking up my Facebook page) and Google is but an algorithm tweak away from making the +1 a more integral component to social scoring and its importance to search rankings. If that happens, there might just be a Google+ “lock-in” for businesses, or a DOJ case, or both.

Jim Tobin, President, Ignite Social Media

My biggest disrupter of 2011 is the decline of GroupOn and the clones. It seemed at one point that GroupOn, LivingSocial and the like would take over the world, but social media is much more than social coupons, and building a business is much more than 50% off promotions. Plus the barrier to entry is relatively low (sales force + email list). Social commerce, when it’s mature, will be about group purchasing of real products at very good, but reasonable discounts. And social media marketing will continue to be about finding ways to help your fans market for you.

Christopher S. Penn, Director of Inbound Marketing at WhatCounts

Here’s the disrupter that isn’t a disrupter on the surface: social media ROI. We’ve gone from almost no discussion and search of it to it reaching a fever pitch this year. The increased discussion on the topic means that we’ve left the niche audience crowd and now even the most insulated of executives is demanding not only social participation, but real results.

Michael Brito, SVP, Social Business Planning, Edelman Digital

The social customer has certainly disrupted business. The recent issue with Netflix and Bank Of America proves that the social customer has not only gained influence, but they are forcing business to change the way they operate, communicate and innovate. The difference between Netflix and BofA is pretty simple. BofA listened to the community and decided NOT to increase their prices for debit card usage. Netflix is sticking to their guns despite losing over 800,000 customers and their stock price declining and declining and declining…

Kipp Bodnar, Inbound Marketing, HubSpot

In 2011 Netflix was the ultimate distrupter. Not for the mistakes they made, but instead for making the hard choice to double down on video stream at the expense of alienating customers in the short-term. Netflix still hasn’t recovered, but they would have died an even slower and more painful death without the risk of disrupting the entire video content market.

Matthew T. Grant, Managing Editor, Marketing Profs

For me, the biggest social disrupter of 2011 was subscription music services like Spotify and MOG (the service I use). As someone who, at one point, was buying several CDs a week and then, later, continuously scouring the web for obscure mp3s, a service that allows me to listen to (almost) anything I want, whenever I want, and even download it to my phone for offline listening was a dream come true. It makes buying CDs, or even tracks from iTunes, seem primitive. When my 12-year old told me the other day he wanted to buy a CD, my first response was, “Why?” The fact that I can give friends immediate access to my playlists and preferences is a social bonus.

Bob Knorpp, host of The BeanCast

Instagram burst onto the scene in October 2010, and over the course of the next twelve months it redefined much of the way that we understand social content sharing. It provided not just a vivid glimpse into the lives of participants, but also an outlet for true artistic expression in which everyone, from novice to expert, could easily grasp and participate. It’s a model to which all social content efforts should pay attention, because it shows us that when we make it easy to express yourself, the Forrester Social Technographics Ladder is turned upside down and we can get widespread participation, rather than just inspiring an elite few.

Lauren Vargas, Community Management Strategist, Aetna

Forget Twitter and Facebook, this year we saw how BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) enabled members of a crowd to separate and come together like a school of fish without becoming disconnected. Influence is a hot topic for social media tool and measurement pundits, but we are only now rediscovering crowd influence and what it means to start and maintain a revolution in this digital world. We have to step up our game to listen across all channels online and offline and map these conversations to our organizations and the right responder.

Thanks to all our contributors! We’ve also received some great disrupters from our community. Keep it coming and share your ideas here.

Tags: Brand, Community, engagement, Marketing, PR