Easier to write, yes, but only outside of emacs (and anything with good snippet support). Within emacs, <s TAB expands to

  #+BEGIN_SRC |
  
  #+END_SRC 

with the cursor placed to specify a language.

As for readability, I don't think it's clear at all that ```...``` beats

  #+BEGIN_SRC perl
  ...
  #+END_SRC

* * *

As it turns out, I hadn't refreshed the page for hours, and someone else said pretty much the same five hours before.