The future of the personal email?

It occurred to me last week - when I received the first personal email in over a month that all of my personal communication was happening via my mobile phone, work email (Not too much!) and Facebook.

In fact, I haven’t written a personal email from my Hotmail account in over 6 month. Maybe I’m late catching on to this idea - I’ve read the articles and reviews on the following subject: the demographic of users of Facebook and MySpace, how Facebook is going to pass out Myspace by September, the duration of time users are spending on social networking sites, the effect these sites are having on the English language in general etc etc…

But personal email is being killed - mine only fills up with notifications from Bebo, Facebook, Linked-In and various subscription marketing newsletters.

So why have a personal email anymore? I’m already being marketed to on Facebook…

The irony is, the main reason why I need a personal email address is to sign up for a Facebook account - but if the personal email is becoming redundant - why are they mandatory for registration. Why are Facebook and Myspace insisting on emails at registration? They can market to users in their own space. Why isn’t a mobile number sufficient? Or personal data

Don’t get me wrong - I’m not saying, it’s the death of email in general. I still use my work one all the time - and couldn’t work without email - but for me it’s only a matter of time before I have a work network to communicate with my clients and suppliers on - reducing the dependency on email. I realise we have the web factory - but I’m thinking along the lines of a professional network - rather than social network.
I’d love to know other people’s views on this? Do other people still use their Hotmail, Google mail or whatever personal email client they have anymore?