Would a decrease in overall size count as an improvement? If you are already loading jQuery sometimes it's nice to use jQuery "native" libraries because there is less replicated code and consequently smaller files.
That was my first thought too. But after looking into it further, the jQuery implementation weighs in at 11.549 kb [1] vs 9.67 kb [2] for the original.
Am I missing something? Seems pretty pointless to me as well.
Please, don't repeat good projects without making any improvements. And do NEVER use jQuery only to say that you use it.