With the help of Craigslist, Jamie Anderson ’05 furnished most of her apartment in Los Angeles for free.

Anderson also used the site, which came to Ithaca in September, to find someone to sublet her Ithaca apartment when she graduated in December.

She said without the site, she would have had a hard time starting a new life in Los Angeles.

“I moved out here with nothing,” she said. “If my roommates and I didn’t have somewhere like Craigslist, we probably wouldn’t have couches or beds. They’re really expensive. I’d probably have an air mattress.”

Craigslist.org is a Web site with free local community classifieds and forums.

The site began in 1995 as a simple e-mail list and has grown to include sites for 190 cities in the United States and across the globe. The site brought its services to Ithaca after high volumes of user requests, said Jim Buckmaster, CEO of Craigslist.

Buckmaster said Ithaca was also a good location because of Cornell University and the college. He said the Ithaca site receives 2,000 postings and roughly a million page views a month.

“Craigslist tends to be very valuable for students because they’re coming and going and need apartment rentals, used furnishings, part-time jobs and, often, they’re new to the area,” he said. “All those needs are well served by Craigslist.”

Craigslist eschews fancy graphics, opting for simple, text-based categories. In comparison with other sites, Craigslist is simplistic and provides instructions and free services. The site is the seventh most visited on the Internet, with 10 million unique visitors every month.

Browsing the different categories of the Ithaca Craigslist will turn up almost anything. The Ithaca site has about 400 housing listings, many of them apartments available for rent or subletting. In the personal ads, students — as well as adults — seek out relationships ranging from one-night stands to platonic friendships. The site also lets users sell their stuff, post in discussion forums, look for rides and find job opportunities.

The site also is used by alumni to find apartments, friends and things to do.

“It’s perfect for just graduating from college and being on a tight budget,” said Anderson. “It makes shopping for free stuff very easy.”

Anderson’s friend, Spencer Rothermel ’04, who also lives in Los Angeles, found a large, old, 54-inch television for free on the site. With other parts found for free on Craigslist and some friends, he made a “keg-o-vision” by cutting a hole in the television and installing a keg and tap with a working television attached on top. Now, he said, friends at parties can go out to the keg and still be at the party because he installed a closed-circuit television system that lets people watch the party from the “keg-o-vision” in the backyard. He said he plans on making more of them and selling them for $800 on his own Web site, which he said he plans to advertise on Craigslist.

Rothermel said he found temporary editing and production jobs on the site, which helped him earn money between other employments.

“It’s kind of like a lifeline because everyone’s moving around so much, everyone needs things and everyone’s willing to help each other out,” he said. “It’s a lot more personal — not like newspaper classifieds, where everything is short and abbreviated.”

Glen Schwartz ’03 found his Boston apartment on the site. He said it was the most popular tool for apartment hunting in the Boston area because it was so easy to use.

“It connects a lot of people who wouldn’t normally get connected, and it has such a database of things — where else can you find that?” he said.

But, Schwartz said, it’s also important to remember to be cautious while buying products.

“It’s a pretty worthwhile site to explore, but you need to have caution and do your homework, especially when you’re making a large purchase,” he said.

Some local landlords said they planned on looking into Craigslist but currently had other means of advertising their apartment listings.

David Taylor is a partner in Taylor-Wenzel & Associates, a real- estate firm in Ithaca. He said he hasn’t used the site to post his apartment listings, but thinks the site has promise.

“To be honest, I haven’t gotten around to [using Craigslist],” he said. “But I’m interested in it. Other electronic communication is already part of our leasing strategy.”

Some students just check out the site for the humorous forums. Senior Genevieve Conklin said she plans to look for jobs and apartments on the site when she graduates. For now, she said she only goes on the site when she’s bored. She said she likes the haikus forum.

“I usually look for funny things because it’s mainly just entertainment for me,” she said. “It’s like tabloids, but for normal people.”