having worked for a company on the whitelist (and worked with Twitter directly for "whitelisting" scenarios), i would have to guess this is for proper deep link

having worked for a company on the whitelist (and worked with Twitter directly for "whitelisting" scenarios), i would have to guess this is for proper deep linking integration. that is, if Twitter links to "App X", Twitter needs to know if it can open App X directly or if it needs to direct the user to some website for App X instead. i'd blame Apple for making this a notorious pain in the ass before i blamed Twitter for trying to fix it.