Reading up on the most compelling social media, tech, and brand stories is one of the joys of being the editor of Marketing Dive.

From that depressing Nationwide ad to Twitter's impressive earnings, these are the most important stories of the week.

The Super Bowl has come and gone, and here are our takeaways from a marketing standpoint:

• As our economy improves, the nation's mood improves--and thus making a downbeat Super Bowl ad feel out of place. The spot from insurance company Nationwide featured a deceased child talking about all the things he would never get to do because he died from a preventable accident, the number one killer of children. Viewers were so upset that Nationwide CMO, Matt Jauchius, released a statement Monday stating: "This conversation (about child safety) was not taking place before Sunday. If the commercial saves one child's life, it's worth it."
• YouTube held its first-ever halftime show. While it may seem a bit laughable that YouTube celebrities could compete with the juggernaut that is the Super Bowl halftime show, YouTube execs say it wasn't created to compete but to offer a 'second-screen' experience. Numbers haven't been released on viewers, so it will be interesting to see if YouTube decides to go forward with the show next year.
• Only half of Super Bowl commercials used hashtags this year. That may sound like a high ratio, but it is actually a drop from last year where 57% of ads used hashtags. What does the drop mean? Likely that the social media landscape is shifting a bit, and some advertisers are utilizing other avenues, like Snapchat, to offer a second-screen experience.
• McDonald's dropped the biggest marketing stunt of its brand refresher so far. The fast food chain offered to give away every product advertised during the big game. That's right: Everything from Toyota to movie tickets to "a big BUNCH of Snickers." AdAge reports that McDonalds is giving away 50 prizes in all. The fast food chain earned 1.2 retweets from the contests, as well as 25,000 new Twitter followers on game day. So if an increased social media presence is part of McDonald's brand refresher, then it's on the right track.
• Also, in case you missed it, here's our feature on which NFL teams "win" at Twitter.

Twitter was busy this week. Here's a recap of what the social site has been up to:

• Twitter, in an earnings calls Thursday, reported record revenue for Q4. The site hit $479 million last quarter, an increase of 32% from the third quarter. However, Twitter only added 4 million monthly active users, which is seen as relatively slow growth, though users were up 20% for the year overall.
• The site has also reportedly inked a deal with Google to have tweets show up in search results. The two companies had a similar deal from 2009-2011, but that was canned after the agreement expired. This will give tweets a better shelf life -- good news for marketers who want to cut through the noise on Twitter. It also will give Google data from all of Twitter's 284 million users, which can in turn help with audience targeting. There hasn't been word so far on how the algorithm will work or what the tweets will look like in Google, so this is a story to watch in the coming weeks.
• It was announced on Tuesday that Twitter would also partner up with Flipboard and Yahoo Japan to have Promoted Tweets appear on those third-party platforms. It's likely that using niche sites such as those two is Twitter's way to test the waters of using Promoted Tweets elsewhere on the Internet. If the ads preform well, we could be seeing Promoted Tweets in many more corners of the Internet.
• Speaking of Promoted Tweets, in an effort to get SMBs to buy more of them, the site announced 'Quick Promote' on Wednesday. The feature lets businesses buy Promoted Tweets directly from their analytics page with just a few clicks. It's meant to streamline the process of buying sponsored tweets, but also to encourage impulse buys. SMBs have largely stayed away from Promoted Tweets, leaving them to bigger companies, so it will be interesting to see if 'Quick Promote' does in fact make Promoted Tweets more appealing to smaller businesses.
• Finally, the site is working on a new homepage to attract new users. Instead of a simple login page when people visit Twitter.com, the new homepage will reportedly display topics and conversations for interested people to browse. This is could be great news for social media marketers, as relevant content can now be seen even to Twitter-weary people.

Looks like there is a new Twitter homepage. Do you like it? pic.twitter.com/5ijgTCseTL

— Joseph Holguin (@JosephHolguin) February 3, 2015