Craigslist

Craigslist.com is a network of free classified advertisements sites, featuring jobs listings accommodation, goods, services, personals and forums from more than 550 cities in over 50 countries. The online communities are moderated and mostly free to use.

It was set up by Craig Newmark in 1995 and has been run by CEO Jim Buckmaster since 2000. However, very little work has gone into the design of Craigslist, and, as a result it feels cold and anonymous. And it's not always that helpful. The UK microsites can be very hit and miss. The jobs section for Aberdeen for example, is, at the time of writing, all but empty. The Cardiff community section will not have you feeling you are part of one, unless that is, you see community as a series of links for anti-depressant medication.

Craigslist is a very popular site but users must beware: this kind of website tends to attracts scams from the unscrupulous, hoping to fraudulently capitalise on the gullible. Gumtree, another classifieds site, is also subject to the same problems, but does this kind of work in a more effective and pleasing way.