That's a shame. There's plenty of potential in email that's yet to be explored. Gmail was a great step ahead 10 years ago but it hasn't kept pace. Deep integration of email with web has yet to happen.
I've noticed the same thing. I exchange emails with a few friends, but it's generally only to swap links for a "read later" purpose (if it was "read now", they'd be sent over xmpp).
Even for the people I share a house with, we found that email with a mailing list is the most effective way to post notifications to everyone, send reminders, etc.
I haven't come across a serious rival to email for those use cases.