Google+ is ready for its close-up again, as the social network launched by Alphabet's Google (GOOG) - Get Report (GOOGL) - Get Report several years ago was recently relaunched to help the search company tackle social.

No one is going to confuse the new Google+ for the next

Facebook

(FB) - Get Report

, but the new service is much simpler to use and cleaner to look at. It's also very fast in its responsiveness.

Will it win in this second iteration? It depends what you call "winning."

Even the first version of Google+ was a success if you believe one of its main goals was to get the majority of Google search users to sign up and therefore become "logged in," and ultimately more valuable users for Google. In an interview with TechCrunch, Google's VP of Photos and Streams said that work at Google+ has never stopped, despite the social network apparently being left for dead. It's always been a project within Google for these past two years.

According to Horowitz, the new Google+ is going to focus on two areas which the team had seen was still very popular with users: Communities and Collections. These are new ways to do the old Google Groups as well as to share information. With this new version, I suspect it will also be a winner if you think that means that Google+ will have more active users a year from now.

There should be a symbiotic relationship with the Photos product too. As that keeps ramping up in popularity, users should bleed over and be willing to give the new Google+ product another go.

But Google+ will never be a Facebook nor is it trying to be. It is trying to be a useful service.

What's perhaps most intriguing about this new energy that is coming out of Google for Google+ is how it might potentially affect Google's interest inTwitter (TWTR) - Get Report .

Google has long been identified as a potential buyer of the Twitter service. As Twitter's share price has weakened over the past year, there has been much more chatter about Google's interest. And after Twitter's tweets started to appear in Google search results, it seemed only likelier that the two would get together.

I am still not convinced that version 2 of Google+ means Google is ready to take the plunge and buy Twitter. Twitter is still a $17 billion company today. It would have to likely pay a premium to that to get the company. You're talking about paying more than 10 times what Google paid for YouTube nine years ago. That's a lot of money -- even for Google.

More likely, I think Google+ continues to make subtle changes to the app over time, with Horowitz hinting it may back aspects of its older failed social products like Wave and Orkut. This feels like a slow journey.

As long as the product is used more often in a year from now, Google will judge it a success.

This article is commentary by an independent contributor. At the time of publication, the author held no positions in the stocks mentioned.