Email is here to stay. I taught email was going to suffer with the introduction of real time messages, chat services, document management tools with collaboration. But traditional email has been in existence for a long time now and continues to be the same service. Yahoo, Hotmail, Gmail continue to provide good email services. BUT how about a new service that sync all the email services just like thunderbird does but without a desktop client. Totally a web business with additional services like collaboration, social networking or a lot more interactivity.
Zobni provides a twist to email services and they are doing pretty well. The fact that millions of people still use Outlook makes it in an interesting commercial opportunity. I believe email can be twisted to be something interesting than what we are used to now. If you know about a service like that i would love to hear about it. If you provide a service like that shoot me a mail.
Other services like inboxfx and Tamadaa have been close to make email a lot easier and better to manage.