Lawsuit Over Refusal to Give Up Twitter Account

Interesting case from just North of the Virginia State line. The alleged value in this dispute is the network of Twitter “followers” that the Reporter developed during his employment with the Paper. In North Carolina, the law generally holds that customer lists do not constitute “trade secrets” and can’t be the basis of a legal claim. In the newspaper industry where the customers are the readers, could there be an argument that Twitter followers are really just a list of readers/customers? https://bit.ly/2KBs73H