Digital Somethings #3 took place last night at the Roger Smith Hotel, the hub for all things social media in Manhattan’s Midtown East neighborhood.  This installment, unlike the two prior, involved networking, a panel discussion, and more networking.  I arrived early for the first part, stayed for about half of the second, and headed out after a quick drink at the hotel bar, Lily’s Bar, downstairs.

During the networking portions of the evening [Editor’s Note: The photo here and other photos from the event can be found at Random Night Out.], I saw Random Night Out’s Nick McGlynn, VaynerMedia’s Leora Israel, eConsultancy’s Meghan Keane, AMP3PR’s Alyson Campbell, McKinsey & Co.’s Devin Brown, Martha Stewart Living’s Brenda Dargan, Rubinstein PR’s Adam Isserlis, Kaplow Communications’ Chaim Haas, Roger Smith Hotel’s Brian Simpson, and freelance publicist Biana Bakman.

Before the moderator and the panelists got started, Simpson spoke briefly about the Roger Smith Hotel and how it’s aiming to incorporate social media into as many aspects of its business as possible, drafting even its hospitality interns and housekeeping department for this push.

The panel itself, for which I was again only present for 30 minutes, was moderated by PR Newswire’s David Weiner, included:

• The New York Times’ Jenna Wortham
• Mashable’s Adam Ostrow
• ABC News Radio’s Dan Patterson

That portion of the discussion involved a conversation about Twitter’s adoption rate, Facebook as a traffic driver, how mobile social networking’s growth is hindered by the reliance of many Americans on regular mobile phones, how Twitter’s new features seem to be no more than window dressing for its advertisers as they help gather data about the service’s use more than provide additional functionality for users, and how platforms such as Gowalla or Foursquare aren’t necessarily the future themselves, but they could serve more interesting users as developers take advantage of their APIs in ways that we don’t even know yet.

More insights from the discussion can be found on Twitter by searching the hashtag #dsnyc.

Thanks to Matt Caldecutt for supporting us and giving us a little writeup on his blog. He truly is the embodiment of a Digital Something.