Facebook has turned up the heat on Google+ with the well-timed launch of a site designed to offer businesses all the info they need to thrive on the social network.

Facebook for Business went live earlier this week to little fanfare. Effectively it's a repository of information on how companies can use their Facebook page to engage with customers and run effective advertising and marketing campaigns.

It also shows how to link the Facebook page to a Place on the site, and how to connect the social experience to a customer-facing web site via the Like button.

There's also information on apps, mobile and Sponsored Stories, effectively ads showing user interactions with a brand.

Although there's nothing particularly new here, it's canny timing by Facebook and surely designed to remind businesses that, while Google has hugely underestimated the business demand for Google+, the market leader remains focused on the needs of consumers and firms.

As for Google+, while a business version of the site is set to land later this year, it has certainly done itself no favours by taking a hard line approach, removing companies that tried to register on the consumer version of the site.

When it finally arrives, Google+ for Business may well give Facebook a run for its money, but at the moment, the market leading social network is content to gently remind its corporate users just how much they can get out of the site.

Google has updated its Google+ privacy policy, warning users that they will have to make their profiles public or risk them being deleted.

The web firm feels that allowing people to keep profiles private will limit the usefulness of the social networking service, and has taken the decision to make everyone searchable.

"We believe that using Google profiles to help people find and connect with you online is how the product is best used. Private profiles don't allow this, so we have decided to require all profiles to be public," the company said on the Google+ site.

"Keep in mind that your full name and gender are the only required information that will be displayed on your profile; you'll be able to edit or remove any other information that you don't want to share."

Google warned that people who keep their profiles private will have them deleted on 31 July.

Many who signed up to Google+ are unlikely to leave simply because they have to make their profile public, but it's a strange decision and takes privacy controls out of the hands of users at a time of heightened sensitivity about such matters. 

Google already has a ridiculously complicated privacy policy for the Google+ Android app, which could see people unwittingly agreeing to allow their voice and location data to be collected.

Google's previous high-profile privacy blunders could also deter some from joining its social network.

The ill-fated Google Buzz was heavily criticised on launch for not allowing enough control over personal details.

Similarly, Google accidentally collected Wi-Fi data when it was mapping the world for its Street View service, and was accused of violating the rights of European and US citizens.

Google had a chance to differentiate its social network from Facebook, which has been heavily criticised for various user privacy blunders, but it seems rather depressingly that the search firm is heading in the same direction.

So often, when a company hypes an announcement it's either a massive letdown or it's not an announcement at all but confirmation of well-known speculation.

Yet, richer-than-you'll-ever-be Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has promised that his company has something "awesome" to announce next week, according to the folks at Reuters.

We at V3.co.uk thought we'd have a stab at guessing what it might be. Obviously it could be something practical and useful, like a dedicated iPad application to help users navigate and interact with Facebook on their shiny Apple toy, or perhaps some form of dedicated photo-sharing application so friends can pass content around.

But maybe it's something more exciting and outlandish than that. Perhaps Facebook is launching its own tablet, maybe a smartphone built and crafted by its own fair hands.

Or what about a 'dislike' button? There's certainly enough self-pitying, political-baiting, showing-off statuses written by the millions of users on the site that need to be taken down a peg or two.

No, we've got it, they've got a celebrity innovator onboard. Following on from Justin Timberlake getting involved in MySpace and Intel buddying up with Will.i.am, Facebook has Lady Gaga, Beyoncé and Rihanna waiting in the wings: Zuckerberg's Angels.

Or maybe Zuckerberg likes Google's Circles system on the Google+ social networking tool so much he's going to add it to Facebook.

We'll just have to wait until next week to see what Facebook's got up it sleeve, although it's probably the dedicated iPad app. Boring.

But what do you think? Let us know below and we'll see who's closest next week.