This post is a guest post by Rose Spitler the community manager for Medfinds.com and the voice behind @medfinds

Once upon a time, I had a job with no external Internet. It was a magical time, when I used Twitter from my (non-smart) phone to capture the hilarious things my coworkers and customers said. I also used the web interface, but again, in a very casual way.

These days, my Twitter life is not so relaxed. I still have my carelessly-maintained personal account, but now also share responsibility for a business stream. Since I’m not the only one tweeting on this stream, we use CoTweet, which allows multiple users to access it. It’s a popular tool, used by big companies, and described by one user thusly: “And all the sexy companies I know of that have sexy employees making sexy tweets all use CoTweet.” /via @nocash. This is an excellent description of us, as well, except that my tweets aren’t sexy.

So, then why are we here? Simply put, because I don’t really like it, for several specific reasons.

First, it doesn’t know how to handle protected accounts. While it’s quick to return with “Twitterer not found” when asked to produce a non-existent profile, it provides no indication that a person has protected their tweets. When asked to display their updates, CoTweet only gives me an infinitely spinning working-indicator thingy.

Second, I can’t see followers/following without switching to Twitter’s web interface, which requires me to be logged in through my personal account. Luckily for me, I do have a personal account, but this does not seem like a useful feature for a professional application. I already have enough tabs open, thank you, I don’t need more.

Third, it only shows a limited number of older tweets when looking at individual profiles, and not a consistent number. My personal account is chatty, and contains a lot of @ replies, and I enjoy exploring other people’s conversations. In order to see all updates (older ones, and mentions of profiles I don’t follow), I again have to switch to the web interface. Lame.

Finally, it takes a long time to load new tweets, but loads them directly into the viewing window, pushing down the ones I’m reading. I’m a habitual multitasker, and easily distracted. I like that the web interface holds new tweets until I tell it I’m ready to read them. I do not like having to choose between catching up on the over-night news or spending endless time scrolling.

There are some features I do really like. It lists Klout score on profiles, which I find more entertaining than actually useful. It allows scheduled tweets, which neither the web interface nor Brizzly (which I am trying for the purposes of comparison) do. It does a nice job of managing conversations related to my account, even though I can’t see those not related. Because viewing profiles does not require changing screens, managing my relationships to other profiles is markedly easier than on other platforms, within the previously described constraints.

Overall, I don’t actually hate CoTweet, but with the many, many options out there, I will definitely continue looking for a tool feels more intuitive and user-friendly.