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Can microblogging, SMS and instant message really challenge email's dominance as a professional and personal messaging platform?

Email first emerged back in 1965 as a way for users of time-sharing mainframes to communicate, but it wasn't until the '90s that usage really exploded. It totally supplanted written memos in businesses and replaced a lot of phone communication, thus becoming the "killer app" of the early Internet generation. Recently, the increased use of alternative communication tools — Twitter and other microblogging services, instant messaging, SMS, social media and others — has caused speculation about the "death of email." But will alternative communication tools providing a real challenge to email's dominance as a professional and personal messaging platform?